Vignettes from a Voyage
by LizzieBoleyn
Summary: A series of hopefully short scenes set during the Voyage of the Dawn Treader my favourite of the Chronicles. I always wondered what happened between chapters....
1. Chapter 1

Author's Notes: I own nowt, I make no money, I'm doing this for the love of the book. Hopefully I'll finish up with a few more little scenes featuring the regular crew of Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, Caspian, Reepicheep and Drinian, for whom I've always had a bit of a soft spot.

_THE FIRST MORNING ABOARD_

The swaying motion of the ship caused no concern to Lucy; in fact the soft swing of her cot, hung from bolts in the ceiling of the Great Cabin, lulled her swiftly into a dreamless sleep. When she woke, instantly alert, she could hardly wait to tumble to the deck and assume her borrowed clothes, happily humming to herself as the sun struggled to peer in through the porthole. This was, she was sure, going to be the best of all her Narnian adventures.

She climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck hatch in a happy daze. With the sun on her face and the wild, sweet smell of brine in her nostrils, she could easily believe herself to be the only creature stirring, sharing the promise of a perfect day with none but the Dawn Treader.

The illusion was dissolved the moment she opened her eyes, for there, leaning against the tiller, stood the Lord Drinian, his dark head tilted as he stared across the endless expanse of the ocean, one hand rested lightly on the top spoke of the great wheel.

He looked so utterly content that she was reluctant to disturb him. Stepping onto the deck, she deliberately muted her usual lively trilling. "Good morning, Captain."

"Your Majesty." He twisted to face her, lofty head dipped in acknowledgement. Lucy smiled.

"I suppose you prefer the title to _My Lord_ aboard ship?" she teased. He laughed, showing a set of strong, white teeth.

"I see Your Majesty has been listening to _His_ Majesty," he said as she moved to stand beside him, her bare elbows rested against the taffrail, confirming his suspicion with a giggle and a blush. "'Tis true, I promised the first man of the crew to use my landsman's title a dozen o' the best. Passengers - royal ones at least - can hardly be subject to so _rude_ a manner of discipline."

Eustace, she thought, would be wise to take a hint from that. "Isn't it a glorious morning?" she said, pushing the thought away.

"Aye. You are above deck early, Ma'am. I trust you slept well?"

"Oh, like a log, thank you. No, I always wake early at sea." That sounded, she realised, quite startled, like Queen Lucy of Narnia, not the silly English schoolgirl who had fallen through the picture frame in her Aunt Alberta's tiny guest room in Cambridge. She was rather pleased with herself. "And if I'm up early, what of you? Can the Captain not permit himself an extra hour in bed?"

"He could, Ma'am; he has the advantage of assigning tiller duty," Drinian agreed cheerfully. "Nay, I prefer to take the helm at these hours; early morning and late o' nights, when the ship is quiet, those are the _true_ sailor's hours. Beside, when the full crew is above deck, _the Captain_ can find himself being _urgently required_ in three places at once! Will Your Highness take a full tour of my lady Dawn Treader today?"

"I should like that, and so would Edmund." Drinian cocked his head.

"Your Majesty makes no mention of her discontented kinsman?"

"Bother! I was trying to forget about _him_."

"Weren't we all?" Rubbing his eyes, Edmund stumbled onto deck, blinking against the brightness after a night below decks. "If he tells you he didn't sleep a wink, don't believe him. Little blighter snored so loud he kept Caspian and I awake for _hours_ after he'd dropped off! Morning, by the way, Lu - morning, Drinian."

"Your Majesty. Are we to assume, then, that His most gracious Highness King Caspian is not yet ready to honour his loyal subjects with an audience?"

"Something like that." The fresh air was rapidly blowing the last stuffiness from his head. Edmund strolled to join his sister at the stern rail. "He mumbled something about _not offending the Dryads, Trumpkin,_ rolled over and started snoring again. He'll appear in time for breakfast, I expect. Is that soon, by the way?"

"Six bells, Sire; inside the hour. Mouse!"

Lucy jumped at the sudden bellow. Forward, Reepicheep could be seen scampering with purpose, nose twitching . Drinian's indignant holler slowed him not at all.

"Reep, in Aslan's name, the prow is _not_ your personal lookout station!" he bawled. The little creature turned, doffing its hat as it bowed to the outraged captain. "Oh, have it your way, but remember: should you fall, _I _shan't be turning the ship around to collect you!"

"He _does_ have excellent balance, you know," Lucy commented, watching with interest as Reepicheep clambered the length of the extended wooden neck to stand between the gilded ears of the dragon's head, tail hanging behind him. Drinian turned the cuss that rose instinctively into a prolonged hiss, in deference to the Royal presence.

"Aye, Ma'am, but he's a lubber. Oh, I've climbed the prow myself, many a time, but with a sailor's knowledge. A sudden squall, a sea creature rearing ahead of us, and what help will his _balance_ give him? We ought to have left the - the infernal nuisance in Narnia!"

"Where he couldn't give that confounded fellow Scrubb a good thrashing?" Edmund queried. "Don't squeal, Lu, you know it's going to happen. Reep won't allow too many more slights to his _honour_; not even from a creature _under the protection of Your Majesty_."

"The young master has no more symptoms of seasickness?" Drinian sounded almost disappointed. Edmund shook his head.

"I did tell her it wasn't worth wasting a drop of the cordial on," he promised. "Oh, he'll be up on deck later, worse luck! It's unlucky he happened to be hanging around when we fell through the picture - when we were brought here, I mean."

"Oh, I doubt it was a matter of luck, King Edmund." Drinian chuckled softly. "Aslan brings you here; therefore, he brought your kinsman. For what purpose, only he knows, but for a certainty, there was no _luck_, good or ill, involved."

"That's true." There was no questioning the Lion's actions; they had a habit of working themselves out, in Lucy's experience. "Drinian's offered to give us a full tour of the ship, Ed. D'you think we can stop Eustace from tagging along?"

"Doubt it," her brother replied gloomily. "He's good at that, Scrubb; tagging along, getting in one's way. Good morning, Caspian."

"I thought I heard you getting up, Edmund. Drinian, no worrying; we slept perfectly easy below, once our ears accustomed themselves to our shipmate's snores! Your own clothes ought to be dry by evening, Lucy; I dare say you'll be glad to have them back."

"It's just a pity we kicked off our shoes."

"More can be found, at Narrowhaven," Drinian assured her, acknowledging the salute of his second-in-command as the burly man came up the poop ladder. "Well, Rhince! Naught to report?"

"Nowt, Cap'n, Sir. Good mornin' Yer Majesties. Shall I stand the lookouts down, Cap'n?"

"Aye, do so. And have the men scrub the main deck after breakfast, if you please. Their Majesties and their kinsman did more damage to the finish that we thought, with all the brine they brought aboard."

"Our apologies, Captain," said Caspian formally. Drinian's dark eyes sparkled.

"I'll thank Your Highnesses for taking no more sudden dips," he said. "Good morning, Rynelf."

"Sir. Reporting for helm duty, Captain. Good morning, Your Majesties."

"Hold a steady course, Rynelf." Relinquishing the wheel with obvious regret, Drinian smiled at his crewman. "East-nor'-east, hard on the wind. Good morning, Master Eustace. Another perfect sailing day."

"Can't even tell when a storm's raging," the sulky boy muttered, pushing past Rhince without so much as a _by-your-leave_. The big sailor scowled, opened his mouth to speak, and shut it again sharply under the combined glares of Captain and King.

"A cheerful shipmate he's likely to prove," Drinian commented. "Don't suppose he's a useful skill? Playing the fiddle, perhaps? The men get tired o' Rynelf's accordion every night."

"I don't think Eustace is going to contribute anything, unless your cook wants to carve that pound of ham from his bottom lip for dinner," Edmund admitted, amidst laughter, as a gong's echo floated the length of the ship. "Good-oh! That means breakfast, doesn't it? Move along, Caspian! I'm permanently famished at sea, aren't I, Lu?"


	2. Chapter 2 Touring the ship

"So many names!" Lucy whispered as two more crew members knelt to kiss her hand - awkwardly, she noticed, with a rustic uncertainty a million miles removed from the suave confidence with which their captain had saluted her the previous day. "How are we ever going to remember them?"

"Stay near to Drinian," Caspian muttered from her other side. "_He_ has no difficulty."

"They _are_ my crew, Sire," the other pointed out mildly, dismissing the men to their interrupted tasks. "Now, if we want to eat later in the day, I suggest we leave the galley men to their duties; that blessed _mouse_ is clinging to the dragon's ears again; gives the lookout inside the mouth someone to talk to, keeps him awake. If Your Graces would care to climb up…"

"Oh, yes please!" Eustace snorted, the sound ending in a squeak when Edmund's foot came down on his. Lucy dashed from the heat of the ship's kitchen, sucking in a great gulp of clean air. "I could never be a ship's cook."

"Nor I, Ma'am; I can burn water," Drinian agreed, swinging himself up onto the broad base of the prow. "You see halfway up, there's a hole cut through? Down there stands our forward lookout. Peridan!"

"Aye, Captain?" A ginger head popped immediately through the opening, a freckled face creasing in concern until bright green eyes registered the friendly grin on the commander's face. Drinian tossed a jovial salute.

"Their Majesties wish to inspect your platform; no, Queen Lucy, I'll go first. Master Eustace, if you choose to remain on deck, His Majesty will accompany you."

"I jolly well - oh, _that_ His Majesty." Edmund pulled himself up short. "You'll have to excuse Eustace; he's a Republican."

"He is a poltroon, though it pains me to speak ill of Your Highness's relation."

"Enough, Reep." Drinian's tone was stern, but the look he cast up to the mouse in its precarious balance was approving. "Now, Your Majesty, there's a fair step down; take my hand, that's right."

"Goodness!" Lucy swayed back, thankful for the firm grip he kept on her fingers. "It's like being suspended over the sea! I shouldn't like to be here in a storm!"

"We have handholds, Ma'am." Peridan jerked a thumb toward a large metal staple held deeply in the wooden column of the prow. "An' waterproofed cloaks."

"Surely you won't see land on the horizon from here?"

"Not afore the chap at the fighting top, Your Majesty, but without a man here casting the lead, we might run aground…"

"It must be time for a sounding; no, Peridan, allow me." Drinian reached behind them, snapping a long cable knotted at regular intervals along its length. "A captain has few opportunities to be a sailor on his own ship, Queen Lucy. If you'll be kind enough to climb out, King Edmund might care to play lookout a while."

"Yes, shift out, Lu!" Edmund's head blocked the sunlight from above. Lucy stuck out her tongue at him.

Peridan goggled. Drinian cast him a stern look, and he subsided.

Edmund squeezed into the corner, watching the young captain as he swung out the long line, letting it trail ahead of the ship and sink its lead weight toward the seabed. As the last of the knots vanished beneath the light swell, he nodded, beginning to haul the rope in. "No bottom at fifty fathoms," he called, coiling the cable onto its hook. "Comfortable, Sire?"

"I wouldn't go that far," said Edmund, who was beginning to turn slightly green. "Tell you what, never mind during rough weather; I wouldn't have this station during a battle for anything in this world or the other!"

"We'd never waste a man on lookout duty in action, Sire." Drinian vaulted up the ladder as if there was something safe, not an ominous drop into the ocean beneath him. "My thanks, Peridan. Erlian will relieve you at noon."

"Aye, Sir." The man respected his captain, Edmund noticed, but did not cower from him. Young as he was, Captain Drinian knew his business; one could tell that from the most ignorant glance around his ship.

From the forecastle they descended into the darkness below decks, where two sets of oars (for making small progress through flat calms and manoeuvring the Dawn Treader into harbour only) lay ready beside long, low benches. "Ugh!" said Eustace. "A galley! How _barbaric_!"

"P'raps we can chain you to an oar, idiot!" Edmund hissed.

"He doesn't understand, you see," Lucy added, alarmed by the ominous darkening of two Narnian brows.

"Eustace will take his turn at the oars, as and when we need them, with the rest of us - except Lucy and Reepicheep, of course." Caspian stated firmly.

"If he's as flabby and feeble as he looks, Sire, the mouse may be more use," Drinian added sharply. "Mind your head, King Edmund! That's tomorrow's beef you almost knocked down!"

All manner of consumables hung from hooks along the low roof; behind the benches were stowed numerous barrels of water and some of wine, roped together against the roll of the ship. At the farthest end of the great hold stood the partition which offered some privacy to the two kings and their companion; small enough luxury, but significant, when the rest of the crew slung their hammocks above the benches on settling for the night.

Drinian sniffed, his nose wrinkling in disgust. "Those bilges need pumping," he muttered.

"On _our_ ships - _proper_ ships - no water seeps in," Eustace announced. Nobody took any notice.

"That ladder takes us up to the masthead, Your Majesty," Drinian informed Lucy. "If I might lead the way…"

"By all means, Captain." Remembering she was Queen Lucy the Valiant, not plain Lu Pevensie, was becoming easier. "Can we climb up to the - I always start to call it the crow's nest, but that's not the term is it? I mean the _fighting top_, don't I?"

"Crow's nest's a landsman's term, Ma'am." Drinian stood aside to allow her out into the sunshine. "Here, Pittencream! Fetch my telescope from the quarterdeck, if you please. If we're to go aloft, Your Majesties, we might as well go prepared."

The sailor named Pittencream, a lanky individual who rolled with the movement of the deck like a true sailor, scuttled to do his bidding. Drinian cursed under his breath.

"I forgot, Rynelf has the wheel," he muttered. Caspian clapped him on the shoulder.

"There'll be no uproar, my Lord; Masters Pittencream and Rynelf have not forgotten the fine lecture you issued at Terebinthia!" he promised. To the children, he added, by way of apologetic explanation, "There is a little _history_ between those two stout sailors. The Captain and I were summoned from our dinner the day after we quitted Terebinthia to separate them on the poop deck."

"Oh, dear!" said Lucy.

"Wasn't it known before they came aboard?" said Edmund.

Eustace only sniggered.

"Ah." Caspian blushed. "Yes, King Edmund, as a matter of fact, the unfortunate _connection_ had been mentioned in our deliberations - we might have found four Dawn Treader crews from the volunteers who came forward for the voyage - aye, even knowing the risk of vanishing into the Great Eastern Sea. However, few of those eager volunteers were proven sailors. Rynelf and Pittencream were amongst them, and - well, when Drinian pressed on me the urgent need to avoid dissension within the crew, I - ahem! - Royal Prerogative, you understand."

It seemed to Lucy that the sailor Pittencream was rather pale when he returned, a fine, polished telescope in his hands which he extended, as if it might bite, toward his captain. Drinian thanked him with a preoccupied air. "I'll lead the way," he said, tucking the tube under one arm. "None will think the worse of any passenger that chooses to stay safe on deck," he added kindly.

"I'm coming up!" Edmund exclaimed hotly. "Oh," he added, spying the relief on Caspian's face. "Sorry. You weren't thinking of me, were you, Drinian?"

"Best not to name names, Sire." Agile as a monkey, he was halfway up the solid mainmast beam. Made from a single Narnian oak, it could flex against the wind and withstand the buffeting of all but the mightiest seas. More slowly, Edmund and Lucy followed, taking care never to look down until they were safely within the stout-sided wooden bucket that wrapped around the mast, above the giant purple sail.

The two men taking their turn on watch carefully shifted around to allow the noble party room and privacy. "What happened with those two men?" Edmund asked, low voiced. Drinian sighed.

"Our Master Pittencream is at least as practised a swindler as a sailor, Sire; one of his victims being Rynelf's sister. We looked into the histories of every man that applied to serve. Casp - _His Majesty _concluded that, of necessity, the villain and his victim's kinsman would manage together."

"Rather silly of him," Edmund remarked.

"Our want of experienced seamen weighed heavily on His Majesty." Drinian remained sternly neutral, inwardly annoyed with his half-slip. "Oh, Narnia has few sailors, Your Majesties; for centuries the heirs of the Telmarines feared the very element that brought their ancestors to this world. Only now do we begin to exert ourselves as a maritime power again.

"Rynelf and Pittencream, to summarise, were brought together on board at His Majesty's insistence; both pledged to live neighbourly. And, for the first two weeks, they did.

"Then we quitted Terebinthia; by some oversight on my part, they were placed on deck together. As we sat to dinner, words were spoken. Before we know it, a rare ruckus has broken out; it took Rhince and myself to pull them apart, and two more men each to carry them down to the hold. Look, Queen Lucy! See, over to the nor'-east, a Galleon Gull. We'll sight land on the morrow, I'd wager my last Lion on it!"


	3. Chapter 3 Into the unknown

_VIGNETTE THREE - INTO THE UNKNOWN_

"The next time Your Majesties seek to _feel the sand between your toes_ on a lonely island, remind me to assemble a guard troop," Drinian teased, leaning back from the groaning table with a smile to his charming hostess. Amidst laughter, only the host remained grave.

"Gladly though I should receive my old friends, were they to return from the East, I must beg Your Graces again to turn back from this cursed quest of yours."

"My Lord Bern." When crossed, the new Governor - and first Duke - of the Lone Islands thought, His youthful Majesty was more than ever the imperious image of his father. "For my part, I made a vow in the presence of Aslan, and before all my subjects, that I would venture beyond the known lands in search of our missing countrymen."

"After all these years, Sire!" Bern twisted the curled end of his thick golden beard between stubby fingers. "Not a sign of my shipmates, nor of their crew! They are dead. To waste your precious life in proving the fact serves neither Narnia nor Aslan."

"What proof have we of their deaths?" Drinian enquired, passing the spiced wine down the table to Edmund at the young gentleman's request. "It may be there are prosperous lands east of this one; that they and all their Galmian crew have settled in them, as you did here, to a better life than any _honest_ man knew in Miraz's Narnia."

"That's true," Lucy seconded. "And even if they _are_ dead, they shouldn't simply be forgotten. Oath or no oath, we have to look for them."

"Well spoken, Queen Lucy," Caspian murmured, his goblet raised in salute. She coloured.

"Are you _really_ Queen Lucy?" Bern's littlest daughter, Sara, enquired, tugging the girl's skirt. "_She_ reigned hundreds and hundreds of years ago; even before Papa's time!"

"Sara! Your Majesty, crave pardon, the child has not yet begun her fourth year!"

"Goodness, we're not offended - are we, Ed? Time flows differently in our world, Sara; when we reigned in Narnia…"

"In the Golden Age," the infant piped up. Lucy smiled.

"So people call it, but I suppose the past always seems preferable to the present, doesn't it? We were crowned as children and grew up; we lived thirty years in Narnia before we stumbled back into our _other_ world; and there, we were children again, and nobody had even noticed we were gone! I don't understand it, so I don't imagine you can."

"I should like to be a Queen," Sara mused, casting a vicious look at the new Duchess of the Islands as she came to bear her chick away. "Nobody call tell a _Queen_ when she has to go to bed!"

"Nobody but a King," Edmund added. "I say, Scrubb, aren't you going to eat those sweetmeats? Pass them alone like a good fellow."

"Filthy, unhealthy things," Eustace grumbled, shoving the platter past Lucy and knocking her goblet over in the process. As servants rushed to dab the mess, and Reepicheep very obviously fingered the blade of his rapier (he refused to leave it outside the dining hall: Edmund suspected it was to defend itself from Eustace Clarence the Mouse was so adamant on the issue) the boy Pug had labelled _Sulky_ produced a mammoth pout. "And that ghastly child would make just as much a Queen as _Lucy_! Golden Age! Never heard such nonsense!"

His shrill squeaks carried the length of the high-roofed Great Hall, and all heads turned. "Our cousin is new to this world," Edmund stated, the fine hairs at the back of his neck prickling under the horrified stares. "He has no knowledge of our history."

"And I doubt 'e knows 'ow to read a book!"

"That will do, Lina!" Bern's fist slammed into the tabletop sending the empty dishes bouncing. "And how often must I remind you, _he_ and _how_ begin with an _H_! I must apologise, Master Eustace - Your Highnesses. My firstborn's manners are unforgivable. Now, are you still determined to sail on the dawn tide tomorrow?"

"Aye." Drinian answered for everyone. "The Narrowhaven tides seldom flood so high; there'll be less rowing for the men, and with the hold stocked and the rigging renewed, we have no cause for further delay."

"Our captain tires of the land, my dear Bern," Caspian quipped, rubbing his filled belly with one hand. "And he is perfectly correct; further delaying is wasteful to us, and unnecessarily costly to your people. Come, a Royal court at your door is an unconscionable expense!"

"Your Majesty's court has restored freedom and good law to our islands, Sire." The Lady Vera spoke on behalf of her own people. Caspian thought he could understand perfectly why Bern had abandoned his perilous seaborne life for the love of her. "We had thought Gumpas would cheat himself into the Governor's chambers for all our lifetimes!"

"Aye, but had you seen his face, when my Lord Drinian and I overturned his table!" Bern rubbed his hands together. The younger gentleman grinned.

"Or when we plucked him from his chair and dropped him on the floor."

"Or when we appointed another to the post he disgraced. Do not tell me, my Lord Duke, that no good can come of this uncertain quest of ours. In restoring right to these, our dominions, we have performed a noble task."

"Pompous twaddle!"

"And you'd know about pomposity, Scrubb!"

"Ed, don't let him upset you; you know it only makes him worse."

"Look at him, sniggering like an idiot," Edmund agreed disgustedly. "Don't s'pose we can leave him here?"

"Edmund!" Lucy was really shocked. "I know he's a beast, but he _is_ really here because of us."

"Jus' what the islands need," Rhince opined in a low rumble, intended as a whisper. "Rid o' one bletherin' windbag in Gumpas, give 'em 'er Majesty's cousin instead!"

All the men of the Narnian nobility at her table, Lucy was almost certain, were hard pressed not to smile at their countryman's bad manners.

So was she.

On the next morning, four weeks after Narnian feet had sunk into the sands of Felimath, all of Narrowhaven - if not all of Doorn - assembled on the harbour walls to wave their Emperor's galleon away to the unknown East. In a small tavern, Pug, once the islands' most prosperous slave merchant, sulked with his cronies, moodily plotting a more profitable career once the interfering foreigners were gone.

Gathered on the Dawn Treader's quarterdeck, Caspian, Reepicheep and the Pevensies waved as enthusiastically on behalf of themselves and the crew, all, from the Captain down, smoothly moving about their tasks for the ship's getting under way. As the cheering grew fainter, and the golden prow swung from the narrow Roads into open sea, the young King expelled a deep breath and turned to his nearest friend, stooped over the compass to call the smallest of corrections to the man swinging on the ship's wheel.

"Well, my Lord Drinian," he said. "Here begins the true adventure. Who can tell what land - if any - we shall lay eye - or foot - on next?"

"One thing Your Majesty may depend upon with confidence," replied the other, not troubling to glance from his work. "His _foot_ will be accompanied by those of half a dozen heavily armed guards! No more idle wanderings, King Caspian: nay, no matter how tranquil the landscapes may look!"


	4. Chapter 4 After the storm

Author's Note: Having come up with a past history for Drinian in this chaper, I'm tempted to write it up as a full adventure. What do you think? Anybody be interested in reading it?

The instant she opened her eyes, she knew: something was changed. The ship no longer bucked and struggled, fighting the attempts of her crew to restrain her

"It's over," she murmured, hardly daring to speak the thought aloud. "At last it's calm again!"

_Too calm_, she realised. The Dawn Treader, hurled like a cork about the tumultuous ocean for twelve frenzied days, barely limped along, her great hull making none of the lively creaks of activity familiar to a well-travelled Narnian queen. Not having been on deck since the first squall had struck, Lucy picked out her brightest blue dress - a purchase made Narrowhaven - stepped into low sandals, and hastened up, through the hatch, onto the poop.

"Oh, my word!" she exclaimed, stopped in her tracks by the vision of devastation that greeted her. "It looks like a ruin!"

"The word's _wreck_, Lu. And it _is_." Edmund had offered his assistance, along with Caspian: and, such had been the enormity of the crisis that Drinian had swallowed his doubts about letting lubbers loose and accepted their aid in hauling on ropes, chopping away debris, and other such rough tasks he could hardly spare a trained seaman to complete. The haggard face of her brother was, therefore, some small preparation to Lucy for the more dramatic changes wrought by continual emergency in the rest of the crew.

There were, she was surprised to discover, few people about. A lone sailor stood at the tiller, where at the tempest's height three men, lashed together for safety, had battled to maintain some semblance of a course. One man had been sent back to the lookout shelf inside the prow: two more (she could hear if not see them, by the rhythmic clank-clank of the pump) worked to force the last of the invading waters from the bottom of the hold. Down on the main deck, a small knot of men under the supervision of their captain were labouring to reinforce the bowsprit, hastily rigged to the stump of the mainmast when the great tree trunk had been carried over the side on the fourth day of the storm.

Drinian's voice was raw as he called his instructions: Lucy winced in sympathy, feeling the snagging pain every word must cause his overused vocal chords in her own throat. Like the common seamen, he wore the same clothes as on the first day, stiffening with drying salt where they were not still damply clinging to his form. _The poor man can hardly have left deck in a fortnight_, she realised. Small wonder if he looked exhausted.

"Ah, Lucy!" Caspian was in a marginally more presentable state: he had been sent regularly to dry off and change into fresh clothes, though not all the power of the crown could have found him a hot meal aboard the wind-tossed vessel. "We have endured, as you see; but barely."

"I'm surprised we didn't drop straight to the bottom in this rotten, leaking tub," Eustace announced, daring anyone to debate with him. "Not even a signal flare, to call for help!"

"Small help's to be found hereabouts, young fella." Lacking the restraint of his betters, Erlian rose to the bait. "An' get yer 'and out o' that, do you _want_ to be 'oisted up the jury-rig?"

"By the neck if we're lucky." The low rumble could only have come from one man: Rhince, lumbering awkwardly as any novice sailor in his weariness. "Make way, Yorr Majesty--" this to Caspian. "Cap'n, the boson's got men patchin' the sail, but…"

"More patch than original sail, eh?" Drinian pushed a hand back through his brine-matted hair. "We shall have a hot breakfast this morning, Rhince, for all the crew: then, I expect the better part of the men to retire to their hammocks 'til nightfall."

"What of yerself, Sir?"

"When I am satisfied the ship is as safe as may be, I shall leave her to your care, Master Mate. Mouse! Take that blasted rapier - your pardon, Queen Lucy - and remove yourself from any place where you might get under the feet of the crew! Have you not noticed, the Royal Galleon o' Narnia better resembles a prison hulk than a fencing gallery?"

Caspian sniffed, much affronted by his captain's frankness. Drinian flashed him a friendly grin, one that lifted the strain and the tiredness, and raised the spirits of all who saw it.

"Naught but the truth, Your Majesty. A good breakfast will make the task of restoring my lady the less daunting. I_ should_ say a good wash too, but we dare not spare the water. Two of the casks were breached in the hold; it would be wise, I believe, to begin rationing immediately."

"Oh, now that's just not on!" Into the serious silence, Eustace's shrill voice rang louder and surlier than ever. "It's bad enough that I was _kidnapped_ and brought aboard this miserable wooden tub: now you're going to torture me as well! I don't mind telling you Pevensies, I shall be lodging a formal complaint against you both - and you, Caspian. You can't even keep that circus rat of yours under control, and these people expect _you_ to get them out of this appalling mess…"

"The King won't get us out of it, Master Eustace." When Drinian spoke so sternly, Lucy noticed, even Caspian looked distinctly nervous. Had Scrubb never heard about the absolute authority of a captain over all those aboard his ship? "We shall find our way as a crew. Unless you have a worthy suggestion to offer, you - as a landsman and a stranger - would be best advised to hold your loose tongue. Beg pardon, Your Majesties - I am loath to grieve you by addressing a connection of yours so rudely."

"Don't mind us," Edmund assured him cheerfully. "Scrubb's an intolerable fellow in his better moods, and they don't come around too often. Can we have coffee with breakfast? I know the sun's burning off the last of that cloud, but I still feel chilled to my bones."

"Coffee it will be, King Edmund." Drinian stretched gingerly, flexing his aching back. "No eggs, mind."

"Not now the hens are all dead," Eustace agreed sweetly, grinning at the horrified squeal his words brought from his younger cousin. "Good gracious, _Queen Lucy_, you don't suppose _they_ could swim, do you?"

Lucy bit her lip. "Drowned?" she questioned softly. Caspian nodded.

"It saved them from being crushed when the mast went crashing through their coop," Eustace told her cruelly. "Now if you only had the sense to keep that vicious little beast you call a _mouse_ in a cage too…"

"_We_ do not permit ignorant strangers to abuse the knights of our kingdom, whatever may be the custom in your native place." He was tired, he was hungry, and he was frightened, though a King could hardly confess as much. In such a condition, Caspian considered, it was hardly surprising that a gentleman's temper might fray. "As you suggest, my Lord Drinian; rationing of our water will be implemented immediately. Our foodstuffs…"

"More plentiful, Sire."

"We've got half a dozen tough hens to chew through. Jolly good, what more could we want?"

"_Go away_, Scrubb." Edmund's clenched his fists, longing to smack the smirking target his cousin presented. Just once in a while, he wished the Narnians were a little more vicious - a little more like their ancient enemies the Calormenes. "Don't suppose we can clap him in irons?"

"If they're Narnian ones, they'd probably break." Pleased with himself, Eustace sauntered toward the forecastle, waiting for the summons to eat.

"Ignore him," he heard Edmund advise. "If he doesn't get a response, he shuts up. Where do we go from here, Caspian? Captain?"

"Onward, King Edmund." He was not surprised the question should be asked, but that it should come from such a source puzzled Drinian. "What else is there to do?"

"Not much, I suppose," Edmund agreed slowly. Rynelf, one of the men working nearest, cleared his throat.

"Begging Your Majesties pardons, but we have no knowledge of there being hope ahead, Captain."

"And the certain knowledge that our water will last barely half the time it would require for us to reach the nearest land to the west." No sense in concealing the gravity of their position: Drinian expected his crew to be sensible enough to deduce it for themselves. "Under the unappealing circumstances before us, do we have a better choice than going on in hope?"

The seaman cocked his head. "Not that I see, Sir," he answered, returning cheerfully to his work. Drinian favoured him with a pleased smile.

"We'll have no difficulty from the men, Sire," he said quietly. Caspian nodded.

"We all knew the risks, I suppose," he agreed. "Ah, breakfast is ready! I never thought I should be so grateful for the promise of a hot meal!

As they assumed their places together with Reepicheep at the topmost of the mess tables, Drinian called the men to attention and, succinctly, laid out the position to them. Not a single voice - or not a single voice worth heeding, he amended - was raised in objection to the unanimous decision of monarch and captain to press on.

"It's all very well to _talk_." Eustace sounded more shrill than usual in the silence: probably meant he was frightened, Edmund thought. "But don't you see, it's all so much _wishful thinking_? _You_ may all be happy to float around until we all die of starvation, but _I'm _not!"

"Thirst comes first, an' if the young gent was so clever, he'd know it!"

"That will _do_, Ugrian," said Caspian firmly. "Their Majesties' kinsman is entirely correct to remind us, we _cannot_ know if safety lies before us. However, if the alternative to _wishful thinking_ is giving up hope, or turning into the wind to attempt to row to known lands west… my Lord Drinian, we have water, at a quarter of a pint per man, for thirteen days. How long, in your estimation, would the journey to Narrowhaven require?"

"Twice that and more, Sire, and with men at the oars all the way," came the crisp response. Caspian nodded.

"Well, Eustace, taking all the facts into account, we appear to have no difficult decision before us. If, however,_ you_ can suggest an alternative escape from our dilemma…"

"I was kidnapped and dragged onto this crazy voyage," the boy replied loftily. "It's not for _me_ to get you out of a mess _you_ made."

"He means, he's got no idea," Edmund translated helpfully. Around the tables, men laughed.

"Rhince, we begin the rationing of water directly; you will be responsibly for distributing equal shares," Drinian instructed, glad to have his expectations of the men's stout-heartedness confirmed. "Forget not, shipmates, that Aslan gave his assent to His Majesty's quest. Would he have sent his anointed King of Narnia on a fool's errand to float until his bones can be picked apart by the seagulls?"

"The Cap'n's right," Rhince called out. Caspian nodded.

"I think, perhaps, he is," he said, looking (Lucy thought) far more cheered by the thought than he ought to have shown himself to be. "Well, shall we start breakfast?"

"A moment, if Your Majesty will allow it. Men, we have had little time to mourn our shipmate Puttendraw, lost overboard on the sixth day of the storm. Rise now, and honour him in silence before we continue the quest he began."

Lucy's little gasp was the only sound beside the creak of bones as every member of the crew and all their passengers (Eustace had to be kicked hard on the ankle by Edmund) stood with bowed heads. How had she failed to notice the empty space at the far table, where quiet, ruddy-faced Puttendraw had eaten his meals?

She tried to remember the sixth day; when the tempest had been at its height, and the Dawn Treader had been tossed from towering waves into dull, grey ocean troughs and the scream of the wind had whipped the words from men's throats before their neighbours could hear them. To be carried over the side and into the dark, broiling waters, to struggle a moment for a last glimpse of the ship as she surged ahead, knowing there could be no rescue, before being caught in the vortex and dragged down, down to the seabed, never to rise again. Could there be any fate more horrible than that?

At a nod from Drinian, the crew resumed their seats and began to eat; quietly, their minds still on their lost shipmate. Lucy followed suit, taking care to sip her water slowly. The rationing (the men might not have realised it, but she knew) had begun with the careful measuring of a cupful per man before the galley fire had even been lit. Drinian was not the captain to leave any thing to chance.

She suspected they were going to be very grateful for that fact, before the voyage was over.

No sooner was breakfast over, and every person's plate washed and stowed, than Drinian was dismissing Rhince and two-thirds of the crew to their quarters. "The ship is secure, and the weather seems set fair," he said, when the Mate protested against leaving a mere handful of men on duty in unknown waters. "I'll take the tiller. And by the Lion's Mane, if I see one of you on deck inside the next six hours…"

The threat was unfinished, and accompanied by a smile. Bowing to the inevitable with no more objection, Rhince led the majority of the men down the hatches and to an unbroken stretch of much-needed sleep.

Caspian hovered nervously at the ladder between the main and poop decks, watching his captain's calm adjustment of their course with wide eyes. "Caspian?" Lucy whispered, plucking his sleeve. "What's the matter? You look as though you've got something to say and you don't know how to do it."

"Eh?" The young king blinked, guilt flashing across his face. "Well, in a manner of speaking. Oh, what am I thinking of? Drinian!"

"Aye, C - Sire?" There it was again, the almost-slip. Queen Lucy had noticed it, and seemed amused more than affronted that a mere nobleman should presume to use his sovereign's name. She followed him up the ladder, King Edmund behind her, both of them determined to understand what had their friend flapping like a frightened hen. _Not the best of similies_, Drinian decided, remembering the awful sight of the birds drowned in their own coop, their feathers torn where they had pecked at each other in the panic.

"I must apologise, my friend." That was the best way to do it, Caspian assured himself, apologising not being an art a king had much practise in. "When poor Puttendraw went overboard, I ought not to have said what I did."

"Your Majesty's reaction was quite natural, Sire." By the clipped formality of the phrase, Lucy guessed that the apology was more needed than Drinian would admit. "The instinctive response of any man to seeing a fellow in trouble is, surely, to call for assistance."

"Yes, but - confound it, Drinian, I promised I should never seek to counter your commands on this ship! And what I said after… old friend, I am sorry. I know you would have been the first man into the water, had there been any hope of bringing the ship around and saving that poor fellow."

"A captain's job can be jolly tough at times," Edmund put in, remembering the wise words of old Purlian, captain of the Four Sovereigns' galleon, Splendour Hyaline. "Especially when he has to place the safety of the ship above the life of one of his men."

"True enough, King Edmund." A frown darkened his brow before, resolutely, Drinian cast melancholy aside. "Besides, if Your Majesty must apologise for the breach of a promise made before we sailed, so must I! I seem to recall that, in answering your demand that we go about for Puttendraw, I ignored Your Highness' title in favour of the more familiar mode of address I _almost_ used again just now."

Caspian grinned. "_That_ breach of promise I can accept gladly enough! Hearing so many _Sires_ and _Majesties_ from _you_ is distressing! My friends, you see, my Lord of Etinsmere and I were partners in mischief as boys, in the days before Miraz contrived to steal my father's crown. I fancy Edmund and Lucy will forgive me, if I ask that our use of given names, above titles, is extended from the privacy of our own conversations to include those witnessed by them."

"Nothing to forgive," said Edmund promptly. "It's jolly difficult to be a Majesty all the time, isn't it, Lu? Knowing what it's like - and I had Peter and the girls to remind me of my name - I'm glad there's at least one person in Narnia can cut the formalities and talk to _Caspian_, not the King."

"What happened to you, Drinian? When Miraz seized the throne, I mean?" Lucy had sensed there was a story behind the obvious friendship between the sovereign and his captain, yet had never found the excuse to enquire. Drinian's shoulders lifted.

"My father, Ma'am, was Tirian, the late King's chief counsellor: too close to His Majesty to be allowed to live and lead a revolt against a jealous usurper that murdered his master. In the same hour that Miraz was creeping into His Majesty's chambers, two of his affinity - Glozelle and Sopespian, if the rumours of the time can be credited - broke down the doors of Etinsmere and slew the master of the place before the eyes of his infant daughter. To stop her screams, they murdered my sweet Katharina too. I was spared by the good sense of our nurse, that prevented my running through the nursery and into Katharina's room."

"Oh, Drinian! How awful!" Edmund was horrified. Lucy, her hands clasped at her mouth, could only nod.

"My mother was from the house, tending a sick relation," the young nobleman continued, almost as if to himself. "When she returned at dawn, she found horses saddled and me dressed, ready for escape. We fled across the Mount Pire Pass, into Archenland, where my father's sister lived with her husband, once Admiral of that country's fleet. There, we heard of the death of Caspian, our master, and the seizure by his brother of the Narnian crown. We heard, too, how my poor mother was accused of the killing of her lord. No mention was made of my poor sister: until Caspian X came into his proper inheritance, it was assumed in Narnia that she, like myself, was safe in Archenland."

"How old was she?" Lucy could only squeak, her voice filled with tears. Drinian expelled a sigh.

"Only five, Ma'am; I was past my eighth birthday by half a year. Oh, we lived well enough in Archenland; I had my freedom, unlike Caspian here, held under the beady eyes of Miraz and his vicious queen. I joined my first ship - the Archenlandish frigate Tiger - on my tenth birthday , and with their fleet I served eight years, until word came from Narnia of His Majesty's victory over the tyrant. I resigned my post, saddled the swiftest of my horses, and rode for home."

"To the very great delight of all his old friends," Caspian finished warmly. "Drinian has been first amongst my council ever since; Trumpkin, Trufflehunter and the rest admire him vastly: and by his efforts, the Dawn Treader will be but the first great ship to sail under the banner of the Lion."

"Aye, Sire: the carrack Narnia Brave will be close to launching now, and the shipwright Master Mortan has a dozen further vessels laid down. My ancestors were seamen, Your Majesties - the first Lord of Etinsmere was granted his honours for commanding the Telmarine fleet, no less. It has been our boast, through generations when Narnians cowered from the coasts, that we Etinsmeres have salt water flowing where the blood should be."

"So you see, this quest of mine is Drinian's too," Caspian explained. "The lost lords were friends of his father; the last of King Caspian's party alive, for Miraz murdered others, that dared question the deaths of both their leaders in one black night. Indeed there _were_ others, killed in strange _accidents_ during the first months of Miraz's reign. Danilvar of Glasswater fell from a roof, with only Madam Prunaprismia for witness. Belisar of the East March was felled by an arrow out hunting; Lord Sopespian found his body. Drinian…"

"The Lord of the Lantern Waste was discovered by Glozelle, drowned in a muddy ditch. Erimon, my uncle, and his ally Arlian were executed, for supposed treason to the new regime. The heirs of those gentlemen and others were persecuted during the usurper's reign, Your Majesties, and all now are part of King Caspian's court."

"I knew Miraz had been a tyrant, of course," Edmund murmured, "but somehow, I never realised he was quite as bad as _that_! By all means use your normal way of talking, in front of Lucy and me; in fact, if you call _him_ Caspian when the crew don't hear, and _we _call him that all the time, I reckon you really should stop _majesty_-ing us. We prefer to be Edmund and Lucy to our friends - don't we, Lu?"

"Absolutely." Lucy nodded until her ponytail was bouncing. Drinian, after a sidelong glance to obtain his master's approval, smiled broadly.

"If it be the will of Your Majesties, then Edmund and Lucy it shall be. But with a single member of the crew about to hear, the formalities will be maintained."

"Understood." Lucy thrust out her hand. One brow raised, Drinian shook it solemnly. Caspian grinned.

"Well, my friends," he said, his heart feeling lighter than it had since the day before the storm had crashed upon his poor, gallant ship. "If you will excuse a mere passenger, I believe I shall abuse my fortunate position aboard and get some sleep. I've spent scarce a quarter the time on deck that Drinian has these past two weeks, and I can barely hold my eyes open!"

"Always was a contemptible lubber," Drinian muttered teasingly as his king and friend turned away.

The laughter of his three closest comrades was the last thing King Caspian heard as the hatch closed, letting the gloom of the lower decks consume him.


	5. Chapter 5 What to do with a dragon

Author's Note: I'm not entirely happy with this, but the more I think about it, the more obvious it is the characters I'm sketching would be going around in circles. Constructive criticism is always appreciated.

It was an hour before any bar Reepicheep could look him in the eye as they expressed solidarity, which rather took the gloss, in Eustace's opinion, off their kind words. "There's got to be _some_ way of breaking the spell," he heard Edmund mutter, forgetful of the fine pitch of dragon hearing. "Even if a Queen's kiss didn't seem to work."

"If Your Majesty seeks a King to try his luck, We respectfully remind him of his seniority to _Us_," said Caspian, winning a snigger from Erlick and a flashing look from the Mouse.

"There's none dare attack a camp with such a guard o' nights, Cap'n?" Rhince volunteered, relentlessly practical. "Always assumin' the young feller's agreeable, of course."

Reepicheep lowered the point of his rapier, which had been aimed in the general direction of the Mate's gut. "We must ask naught of our unfortunate shipmate than we would volunteer to him ourselves," he trilled.

The fine hairs on Eustace's spinal ridges prickled painfully. Of all creatures to defend him, that the victim of his worst excesses should be first! Great, steamy tears formed in the corners of his pale gold eyes, and everyone had to spring back to avoid a warm dousing.

He thumped his tail, gouging a deep scar in the sand; wagged his head. "I think he agrees," said Caspian. "Thank you, Eustace."

"Let's find you somewhere cosy," Lucy suggested, making her fingers rest on his tough, scaled hide as long as she could conceal her revulsion. "There's a little hollow on the edge of the trees, south of the camp; come and see!"

He trudged beside her, through the rough village of rope and canvas the men had erected during the day, past seamen who called cordial greetings from their work, to Queen Lucy and her kinsman. On the southern edge of the settlement, they came upon Ugrian, a blacksmith in his landlocked days, cursing colourfully as his makeshift furnace failed to fire.

Eustace paused. He stretched his snake-like neck and huffed. The charcoal caught, white-hot in an instant.

"Thank 'ee, Dra – young master!"

Eustace swished his tail. "He means, you're very welcome," Lucy translated hopefully. The being that was almost her cousin loosed a fiery hiss of agreement.

As the days progressed, and all manner of tasks were made easier for the crew by his presence, Eustace almost began to like being a massively powerful flying beast: except at night, when his usefulness was limited to lighting fires and providing a heat source for the crew to huddle around in the rain. On the first full day, he had cruised on the air currents into the mountainous heart of the island, returning with a tall, straight pine that matched exactly Drinian's requirements for a new mast timber; the crew had raised three lusty cheers as the Captain congratulated him on his judgement. Seeing the men chipping with small tools to strip boughs and bark, he had offered a set of giant, curved claws and done the job in a trice. And with his proficiency in humane killing, the butchers down the farther end of the beach were soon surrounded with the fat carcasses of sheep and wild goats to messily skin, salt and store in the Dawn Treader's hold.

Eustace had never realised what a pleasant sensation it was to be popular. Neither had he understood quite how unhappy he had been, a surly boy on the edge of a merry company that accepted his hideous presence without question. Both discoveries shook him; but there was one realisation alarmed him even more.

They were worried. Caspian and Drinian, Lucy and Edmund, Rhince and the men. Uncertain of what to do with him; even of how to speak to him. It took three days for the last man to stop asking _do you think he actually understands us?_ within earshot. And though they accepted his assistance in countless tasks, in every earnest face, the chief concern emerged.

"What are we going to _do_ with him?"

The voice he first heard speak it was Lucy's, below him in the dunes as he hunkered one starry night a mile north of camp, hot, heavy tears dribbling down his muzzle, in the mottled cover of thick bushes that matched almost perfectly the dull green and dirty brown of his hide. "It's been almost a week, and we've _still_ no idea how to break the enchantment. We can't delay sailing much longer, Captain, can we?"

"We've no cause, Ma'am: the Dawn Treader is as fit for sea as she ever was." The sand before Eustace shifted as the speakers climbed closer, up the steep seaward side of the dune. He shuffled backward into deep cover, aware that a growl or a small movement would announce his presence, silence their hurtful honesty, yet powerless to make the gesture. As he inched backward, head turned to hide the faint whorls of steam he exhaled on every breath, six dark forms crested the rise and turned to sit, facing the bay, mere yards away from him. "We know, by Eustace's scouting, there's an island not two days' with a good wind before us. If we had but a solution to _those_ problems, I should say we might sail at dawn tide."

"Could he keep up by flying?" wondered Edmund.

"What about towing him?"

"His weight would break a galleon's back, Sire; to say naught of attracting every deep sea beast we might prefer to avoid."

"We could lash 'im onto deck, Cap'n?" The smoky bass of Rhince's suggestion explained their careful formality. "Shift the provisions below to balance."

"He wouldn't _stay_ on deck in rough weather, would he?"

"And whatever we do, there remains the question we all have danced about," said Caspian, propped up on both elbows directly before the eavesdropper. "How in Aslan's name are we to _feed_ such a shipmate?"

"I've not seen him eat a thing!" wailed Lucy, and Eustace's stomach contracted. _Girls!_

"I would surmise that Your Majesty's kinsman, to prevent distress to his own person and ours, has satisfied his appetites in _private_." Reepicheep sounded embarrassed, and on Eustace's behalf. The boy inside his monstrous shell wept for unmerited kindness. "You have noted, surely, the condition of the carcasses he has delivered to our butchers? Unmarked, save by the puncturing of claws where they were carried. Master Eustace is as humane a dragon as ever lived; it would be no less distressing to him than to Your Majesty's gentle stomach, to observe his present form at its repast."

"Reep's right, of course," said Edmund. "And we're _all _jolly sorry for poor Scrubb, but that's not going to solve the problem. How're we going to feed him?"

"We've got fishin' nets, Your Majesties."

"Do dragons _eat_ fish?"

"In greater quantities daily than we could likely gather, Sire." Drinian rose, a stark, black shape against the rippled velvet of the silvered sky. "Master Eustace is like to need as much nourishment as the whole ship's company together, and I see no reasonable way we can provide it. However, there can be no suggestion of abandoning him here."

"None whatsoever," Caspian affirmed, before Reepicheep could shrill outrage at the voicing of the thought. "We of Narnia do not turn our backs on a distressed comrade; I wish only we had some way to make your cousin aware of the fact, Edmund. Have you not seen him watch us? He fears we might slip away in darkness."

"I have sought to console him, Sire!"

Eustace could imagine the smiles, carefully concealed, on every human face. "Indeed," Caspian managed.

"I'm sure Eustace has been awfully grateful for your stories, Reep." Lucy sounded as if she might burst into tears (or giggles) at any second.

"Aye, Ma'am, there's naught more cheerin' than the tale o' Sir Aidan the Afflicted," Rhince growled. Eustace puffed a short burst of smoke.

"It ended well enough," Caspian soothed.

"After two years of enchantment, Sire!" Drinian pointed out. "And he, like Rabadash the Ridiculous, was transformed into a domestic beast, not a full-grown dragon!"

Both stories, which Eustace had heard repeatedly, were amusing enough, and kindly related by a Beast incapable of malice. But both referred to lengthy enchantments, and after six days, Eustace yearned for fingers and toes and a voice. The good humour of companions palled, when one couldn't laugh at their jokes, and he was beginning to realise how much he owed people who had smiled in the face of his determined rudeness.

"Well," Caspian said on a sigh, pulling himself upright. "We have achieved naught in solution to our problems, but I dare wager we all feel the better for their airing. My Lord Drinian…."

"Blowed if I know, Your Majesty." The tall figures of Captain and Mate on either side of the group sent long, black phantoms tumbling down to the base of the dune. "The voyage is devilish enough without a _dragon_ aboard, but when did a little difficulty daunt us?"

"If it did, we should be sitting in my study at Cair Paravel declaring the entire idea of an eastern quest absurd," Caspian concurred as the children chortled and Reepicheep chirruped his assent. "Back to camp, shipmates! We may dally a day more, hoping our dilemma will resolve itself; and then, we must ask Eustace himself what's to be done. Lucy, you are drooping! Lead the way, Sir Reepicheep, and _cautiously_! Our royal posterior has connected with the soft sand of these confounded dune fields more than once in the past week: we have no desire to repeat the undignified experience!"

Laughing, they slithered down the sand slope, their voices fading as they trudged back to their camp. Eustace emerged from hiding, the breath he had been holding erupting in great, fiery gulps.

They were not going to leave him alone on a strange island. He was ashamed of himself for ever suspecting them, guiltily aware of what his suggestion would have been has his and Edmund's roles been reversed. _I'll not be such a little brute again, though,_ he promised himself. _If I ever turn into me again I'll do better, honestly I shall. Ow!_

Something was picking at the sensitive skin on his ridges. Eustace turned to swipe the irritant with a heavy paw, only to feel the itching start on its pad. He swished his tail angrily, branches snapping like a swarm of irate wasps around him.

It wasn't fair. He broke cover and thumped his way inland, not knowing or caring where his aching feet might take him. Once he was beyond a bow shot of the shore, he lifted up his head and howled.


	6. Chapter 6 Burnt Island

Author's Note: I make no money from this, but why would I want to? Many thanks to the incredibly encouraging reviewers, you're really spurring me on.

It took a day and night to reach the small, low-lying island some of them had seen from Eustace's back when he had carried a select few high above the place where the Lord Octesian had, somehow, met his death. As the Dawn Treader cruised in search of the best anchorage, Caspian, Eustace and the Pevensies joined Drinian on the forecastle, studying the low, scrub-covered land for sign of life through telescopes. "Are we going ashore?" Eustace wanted to know.

"Course we are," said Edmund promptly, lowering his glass. "_Looks_ uninhabited, but one never knows: we might find a trace of at least _one_ of our missing lords inland."

"I'll have the boat lowered for Your Majesties."

"Won't you come with us, Drinian?" Lucy urged him. "There's surely nothing aboard that can't wait for a few hours! Come and explore with us!"

The captain considered for a moment. "Very well, Queen Lucy, I'll join you ashore. Where are _you_ scurrying to, Eustace?"

"To fetch my sword, of course!" the boy replied, as if it should be obvious. "We're best going armed, aren't we?"

"Reep is definitely having an effect on your kinsman," Caspian muttered to Edmund. "Still, I dare say he's right. Fetch your bow, Lucy; you'll assemble a party, Drinian? Sir Reepicheep! Do you intend to join our explorations?"

"At Your Majesty's service!" squeaked the Mouse, already halfway to the port bow where the boat was being gently lowered. Inside a few minutes the whole group was settled, with Drinian at the tiller, the Master Bowman and three sailors at the oars, and Reepicheep, for all the world like a carved prow figure, perched dangerously at the tip of the bow.

Lucy let her fingers trail in the water, softly humming to herself. Beside her, Eustace fidgeted, still uncomfortable with the long, straight sword (Caspian's second best) hung from a belt at his waist. "It all _looks_ quiet enough, doesn't it?" he said, to nobody in particular.

"Looks can be deceiving," Edmund replied, squinting at the approaching shore. "I say! Rabbits!"

"We might shoot a dozen, Captain?" The Master Bowman sounded eager. "Won't be much sport, mind," he added, more gloomily. "If the place _is_ deserted, they'll have no fear of folk. Shellin' peas, it'll be!"

"I see no objection. Your Majesties?"

"Rabbit stew will make a pleasing change from salt beef or venison," said the King. So, as Drinian drove the boat ashore, leaping lightly over the prow to ground the anchor well into the sand, the bowman and his party set arrows to their strings and crept forward to sight their prey.

"So much for shelling peas," said Eustace a second later, as every rabbit in range disappeared into a convenient burrow or bush, and the archers began to sweat and cuss with frustration. "They _must_ have _some_ experience of humans! See how they run!"

"P'raps it's inhabited after all," Edmund agreed, pointing sharply to their right. "See!"

"A cottage!" Lucy darted forward, only to stop short as her mind registered the building's tumbledown, blackened appearance. "Gracious! Quite burned out!"

"And not the only thing touched by fire," Reepicheep added, scratching the blackened bark of a twisted stripling , then fastidiously washing his claw. "See, Your Majesties! Half the trees hereabout are charred."

"So near the coast, it might be pirates' work?" suggested Caspian.

"Or the dragon's," said Edmund. Eustace shuddered.

"That would seem to be the highest point of land," Drinian remarked, gesturing to a low, domed hill some way inland and to the south. "Climb that and we should have a fair perspective of the lie o' the land; to say naught of what might await us further east."

"Missing the sway of the ship already, Drinian?" Caspian teased. "Very well; it looks an easy enough distance to make. Master Bowman! We shall leave your party to the hunt: should you discover aught of note, sound your horn, and we shall find you."

"Understood, Your Majesty," came the harassed reply. Lucy giggled.

"I shouldn't start looking forward to your rabbit stew yet, Caspian," she said, skipping beyond the blackened cottage, along a faint but discernable path. She paused, head on one side, considering the ruined structure. "Goodness! They can't have been very _big_, the people who lived here! Even_ I_ should have to stoop, if it still had its roof!"

The walk to the single hill worthy of the name was pleasant enough, despite the desolation of more burned buildings on the way. "It's a strange thing, mind," said Drinian, as they finished the inspection of a pair of larger ruins beside a brackish pond. "Listen! I doubt I've heard a single bird's song since we landed; there's not even a gull circling by the shore!"

"I'd not thought about it, but you're right," Edmund agreed, wrinkling his forehead. "It's not as if _all_ the trees have been burned."

"Not even the majority of them, Sire; though there are few clusters bigger than copses to be seen," said Reepicheep, his nose twitching. "There are plentiful rabbits - as our unhappy Master Bowman will doubtless affirm. From a position more advantageous than yours, I have discerned the movement of countless insects in the grass. Yet it would appear that every creature with the ability to do so has abandoned this island entirely."

"To go where, I wonder?" asked Eustace.

"And for what reason?" added Drinian. "We're well inland now: no self-respecting pirate would venture so far from his ship."

"A civil war, perhaps?" Edmund volunteered.

"That wiped out the whole population?" Caspian sounded dubious. "Nay; having taken the trouble to fight, would the victors abandon the scene of their success? The land would appear fertile enough."

"There's another house, half fallen down, and all burned," said Lucy, who was feeling stupidly cold despite the brightness of the sky. "Let's have a look out to the horizon and go. There's something - desolate and _empty_ about this island. I don't like it."

"And there seems to me small chance of learning more of the fate of our lost countrymen here," agreed the King, as the main body of the group set off in pursuit of Drinian and Reepicheep, the Mouse running to keep pace with his friend's long strides. "You're right, Lucy; with all these lonely ruins standing about, it really is quite eerie! I dare say _that_ is why the people who once lived here left!"

"If they travelled to land further east, we'll be able to ask them," said Eustace, beginning to puff as the gradient of the slope proved to be more severe than it had looked. He caught the point of his sword (not having fastened the belt tight enough, it had slithered around to the front as he walked) between his legs, and stumbled. "Drat this thing! Anything to be seen, Drinian?"

"Nothing." Shielding his eyes against the glare of the noon sun on still water, Drinian scanned the distant horizon: looking, Edmund thought, aggravatingly cool, with most of his friends panting from the climb. "We shall simply have to go on in hope, as we have before."

"We've found_ two_ islands beyond those we used to know: why shouldn't there be dozens more?" said Edmund cheerfully. "All right; it looks like a gentler slope this side: why don't we stroll down, walk around the hill, and back 'round to the boat that way? It might give the archers time to catch us a couple of rabbits!"

Nobody had any objection to that scheme so, leisurely, they began an easy descent over the softly rolling ground. "There's no reason to camp here overnight, is there?" asked Lucy, almost fearfully. Caspian shook his head.

"None that I know of. Captain?"

"We might top up the sole water cask we brought ashore, I suppose, but there's naught to delay the ship: saving perhaps, the royal whims of Your Majesties."

"Whims, indeed!" Outraged into laughter, Caspian led his band of adventurers down onto level terrain and northward, around the hill and back toward the Dawn Treader. "Look! That stream must run down to the shore. Shall we follow it?"

"Let's," said Eustace, licking his lips. "And stop for a drink from it, too! Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm parched!"

The stream was cold, but not quite the refreshment they had hoped. "Even the _water _tastes of cinders," Edmund grumbled. "Any of this we take aboard had best be boiled and used for washing! We should _have_ to be desperate to _drink_ it!"

They reached the beach soon after, and turned sharply to the northwest, toward the high mast of the Dawn Treader, clearly visible on a treeless shoreline. "What's that?" asked Caspian, pointing to another low building; this one with a roof still intact, and seeming hardly touched by fire.

"A boathouse, by the look of it," answered Drinian, his curiosity piqued. Reepicheep scampered inside, to appear an instant later waving a small, well-made oar.

"With a boat still inside it, my Lord!" he squeaked excitedly. "Made for a child, perhaps: or, if our guesses about the people of those farmsteads were accurate, a dwarf."

"In fine condition, too," Drinian announced, stooping to enter and inspect the craft for himself. "A coracle, ash framed, with a waxed, waterproofed skin. A sturdy piece of craftsmanship."

"And ideally constructed for - perhaps - a Talking Mouse," said Reepicheep. "Perhaps I might - with Your Majesties' permission, and yours of course, my Lord Drinian…"

"Granted, Reep," said Caspian immediately.

"Then I shall take it back to the Dawn Treader."

"Or more likely," added Drinian with a teasing smile, "_I_ shall take it, on your behalf! Very well, Reep, but remember; guard your tongue from now on, else I'll see you cast adrift in your prize!"

The Mouse twittered indignantly, brandishing its oar like another rapier until the laughter of its friends made its own amusement impossible to repress. "I shall watch my words with care, Captain," it cheeped, skipping ahead of the humans as they made their merry way back to the Dawn Treader's waiting boat.

By nightfall the land they had christened Burnt Island was a mere splodge of darkness on the western horizon. Carefully applying a further coat of waterproofing wax to his new vessel, Reepicheep sat on the main deck, softly singing the Dryad's song to himself. The abandoned boat of Burnt Island, it seemed to him, might prove highly valuable to one determined to sail farther than a galleon could go, right to the very End of the World itself.


	7. Chapter 7 Be careful what you wish for

Joints creaked, bones cracked, and small moans of effort erupted from the throats of the sweating men, but slowly, agonisingly slowly, the taut arch of serpent inched backward. "Looped tight to the keel!" Drinian croaked, acutely aware of the scrape of barnacle-crusted hide against the base of the hull.

"She's movin' Cap'n!" Rhince's words would not have been audible beyond his immediate neighbour. Drinian grunted.

"Not fast enough - the sternpiece," he managed. On his other side, Caspian froze, hands sliding against the wet, muscled bulk of the monster.

"An axe!" he heaved, sweat stinging his eyes and running salty into his gaping mouth. "And still - _shove_!"

"Can't - push - harder!" gasped Edmund, whose hands were lacerated from pressing against a particularly jagged encrustation. "Ouf!"

Lucy scrambled awkwardly along the deck, heading for the axe she knew was stored inside the poop hatch. She was almost there, hand outstretched to grasp it (though whether she would have had the strength to swing it as required must remain doubtful), when there was a massive cracking sound, like a small copse being felled. The Dawn Treader was thrown up atop a lashing surge of ocean, her purple sail banging as it was struck by the full force of the breeze. Tossed sideways by the force of the motion, Lucy alone was able to observe the loop of monster tightening in to nothing before it vanished on another splash beneath the waves

"We're free!" she shouted exultantly to men who, crumpled on the deck where they had stood, were simply too dog-tired to fathom what had happened. "Look! It's snapped off the sternpiece, but we're free! Golly, it's _enormous_!"

"Not chasing after us, Ma'am?" His head was spinning: Drinian was uncertain whether he felt giddy with relief, or from a shortage of oxygen left in his lungs by his recent exertions. Cautious, he forced himself up onto one elbow, blinking astern to see the gigantic monster nose along its own length, probably in search of the Dawn Treader's wreckage. "Aye, a fair size: a full-grown, adult male, I should say; powerful enough to snap the ship at her strongest point. A pity we should lose that fine piece of carving, but better we labour without a sternpiece than the likeliest alternative."

Murmurs of agreement muted into chuckles. "Might've took one o' them teeth as a new sword for the King, Cap'n," Erlian volunteered, baring his own uneven set. "No Dwarf'll carve an edge _that_ sharp, I'll wager!"

"I should as lief keep a dozen leagues between those teeth and my hand, though I thank you for the suggestion, shipmate," said Caspian mildly.

"Have you seen aught like that beast afore, Captain?" Rynelf massaged his throat, dissatisfied with the raspy voice it gave out. Drinian raised a weary grin.

"Once, and that at a comfortingly great distance; they seldom stray into populated seas. All well, men?"

Assorted cautious murmurs of assent were raised. More quietly, Drinian addressed the anxious girl hopping from one prone figure to the next. "And you, Lucy?"

"Goodness, I'm the only one who _is_ all right, Drinian!" she cried. "Can you sit up, Caspian?"

"Just, I suppose." Most of the men were stirring themselves now, lifting heads, flexing backs and arms. "Ow!"

"You too, Sire?" Drinian stretched himself gingerly in rising, giving his shoulders a tentative roll. "Fancy I've pulled every muscle in my back," he announced.

"_I've_ pulled muscles I didn't even know I had," said Eustace solemnly. "Ouch! Sorry about your sword, Caspian. That thing must have hide as tough as iron!"

"Yours was a gallant gesture, Eustace," the King told him kindly. "The teachings of Sir Reepicheep are showing their worth."

"Aye, and as to that…" Drinian chuckled as the Mouse, swaying with fatigue, clambered awkwardly up the poop ladder to flop amongst its companions. "Who ever thought to hear a pacifist's words coming from our valiant knight? _Don't fight_, indeed!"

People laughed. Reepicheep bowed his head. "The teaching between Their Majesties' gallant kinsman and myself is equally shared, my Lord. However, grateful am I, Your Majesties - gentlemen all - that my intentions were so swiftly discerned. Alone, I should have had an equal chance of raising Cair Paravel on a single claw as of forcing yonder monster from our decks."

"What's the witless animal doing, anyway?" Eustace wanted to know. "I'd have expected it to be chasing us by now!"

"Don't you go puttin' ideas in it's 'ead, young feller, if you please!" called Pittencream. Eustace raised both hands in apology.

"It seems to think it'll find us floating around." The beast could still be seen, away to the west, but making no effort to pursue its prey. Drinian, leaning against the taffrail, laughed.

"The Sea Serpent depends upon its strength, not its wits, Eustace. With luck, it might spend the next few minutes wondering where we're gone, giving us time to get clear! Rhince, breach a cask of rum for our fellows! I dare say we _all_ have earned an extra tot!"

A ragged cheer went up. Grinning hugely, the Mate bustled below with two of the crew to carry a large, darkly aged oak cask onto the main deck. "Take a nip yourself, Cap'n?" he called. Drinian cocked his head, considering the question.

"Aye; and we'll have a thimbleful for Reepicheep too, I think," he decided, frowning at the Mouse, which still trembled with exhaustion. Obligingly, Rhince dripped a few drops of pungent alcohol into a ladle. Lucy took it from him.

"_I _shan't have any, thank you, Rhince," she said. "Here, Reep; I _suppose_ it might make you feel better."

"Ouf! I'll say!" Edmund winced against the strength of the raw spirit, but he had to admit, it had a pleasingly warming effect in the stomach. Drinian knocked back his measure in a single swallow, savouring the stinging heat of the liquor against his throat. The taste was one he had never entirely acquired, in all his years at sea; but there was nothing more warming, after a bad shock, than a good strong tot of rum.

All his years, he thought; and not yet so much as fifteen passed since the ten-year-old orphan of Etinsmere had clambered aboard his first Archenlandish vessel. It said much for the poor condition of Narnia's recent maritime escapades that a man in his early twenties could consider himself amongst the kingdom's most experienced mariners.

The ship, he realised, was yawing more than was her habit. "Peridan! How does she steer, with the weight of the sternpiece gone?"

"Fair enough, Sir." But the seamen all knew, their Captain had a rare instinct for reading the behaviour of his ship. Without needing to be told, the man at the tiller moved aside, allowing Drinian to rest both hands on the wheel.

"As I thought; a touch out of balance," he murmured. "Rhince, we shall have to shift a little of the ballast aft to compensate for the loss of the sternpiece's weight. Perhaps a brace of wine casks to start?"

"I'll see to it, Sir." Immediately, Rhince was assigning men to the new task. Slowly, the poop was cleared, until only Drinian, Caspian, Eustace and the Pevensies were left.

"I hope there aren't any other _nasties_ lurking at the bottom of these seas," said Eustace, feeling very much better than he had after losing two games of chess to a Talking Mouse and watching rain fall for what felt like for ever. Drinian grimaced.

"There's only the Kraken, on the same scale as the Sea Serpent, of course," he said, running a practised eye over the men returning to their duties down on the main deck. "And we should be unlucky indeed, to encounter both in the same voyage! Of course, these _are_ uncharted waters. There may be others, yet unknown to Narnians."

"That's cheering!" said Edmund. "I'll tell you one thing for nothing, though: I always rather wanted to see a Sea Serpent, when we were here before. Old Purlian, the captain of our galleon, used to tell me, be careful what you wish for, King Edmund. I suppose he was right!"

"I'm sure he was!" said Caspian devoutly. "If I hear anyone expressing the remotest desire to see a Kraken, I'll - I'll… put him in irons! I will, really! Drinian - Lucy - Eustace! What are you laughing at? It's not funny, I tell you!"


	8. Chapter 8 A place with a curse on it

Author's Note: This began as an attempt to explain one thing that bothered me from the book: Why would a Telmarine Lord of Caspian the Ninth's Narnia carry Lions and Trees as currency? It grew of its own accord with another question: how does the arrival of the Pevensies affect Caspian's relationship with his Narnian friend? Thanks to Almyra: wherever possible, I'll put in that quotation!

"_Their Majesties all seemed a bit bewitched when they came aboard."_

_Drinian, after Deathwater island_

Though they had left the island far behind them, it seemed to Edmund that something of the malign aura of Deathwater must have clung to their party as they returned to the ship, coming to rest, like a fine mist, over everyone aboard. Lucy had been distant; Caspian, preoccupied. Eustace slipped from his old, surly manners to languid indifference. Even Reepicheep had ceased to perch on the prow, softly singing the Dryad's ditty.

Worse, the effect seemed to have spread through people who had not approached the deadly stream. Drinian no longer snapped out his orders with the same rasping relish; the great bull's bellow of Rhince was subdued. The lively hum of the workaday Dawn Treader was entirely snuffed out.

"It won't do, you know," Lucy announced as they ambled from the forecastle and their nightly stare at the stars. "Ever since we left that beastly island, everything's been _wrong_. And we're all afraid to _say_ anything about it!"

"It does rather feel as though the spirits of the place are haunting us," Eustace admitted, rather proud that he had bitten off the first, nasty, answer that had touched the back of his tongue. "P'raps Lu's right; we might shake off this horrid, _empty_ way of feeling if we tried talking about - well, whatever it was. I know what we _found_, of course, but it all seems such a ghastly _blur_."

"I've tried puzzling it out in my head," said Edmund, and the others nodded. "Oh, I don't know! None of us is altogether sure of what's wrong, but we all know _something_ is. The crew didn't get near the stream, and yet… is it just me? _Nobody's_ been his old self since we stopped _there_. I don't understand it, and I feel as though it's driving me mad."

"If you would have sense spoken of our experiences, King Edmund," said Caspian, sounding relieved (Edmund thought) that another had put into words what he (probably) was feeling. "Then allow me to suggest that our predicament is laid before our bold and practical captain. If salt good sense is necessary, I know of no man better able to dispense it than Drinian."

"_Could_ we, do you think?" Lucy was almost in tears. "He's been so busy, with this awful weather, and one silly, nasty niggling problem after another to sort out… Wouldn't it be an awful _bother_, for us to…"

"I did consider showing him the objects we brought back?" suggested Caspian. "The mere fact that _we_ can discern nothing beneath the rust doesn't mean that nobody else will see anything, and Drinian knows the insignia of all the great Narnian Houses as well as I."

"Besides, he's been watching us oddly since we came back." It made such perfect sense, but the Captain had been out of temper for much of the past few days. Edmund told himself he was loath to trouble a man already weighted down with burdens. "_He_ knows something fishy happened on Deathwater."

Just speaking the name - Reep's name - sent chills through the little group wandering along the main deck. "No time like the present," Eustace muttered, sticking out his chin. "Hi, Drinian! Can you spare a minute?"

"Gladly, Eustace." He was tired, he was cold, and he had not been more than ten minutes at a stretch away from deck in the past twenty hours. If his noble passengers had decided to seek out his merry company, Drinian thought sulkily, they had chosen the worst of their moments! "Trouble?" he added under his breath as, led by Caspian, they joined him on the poop.

"Yes," said Lucy.

"No," said Edmund.

"In a manner of speaking," said Caspian .

"Lion bless me, I shouldn't have asked!"

"We brought some items from the last island, Drinian."

"Aye." The word came out flatly. "Your Majesties were very _secret_ with your trophies."

It had hurt, Caspian realised, feeling as if a bowl of cold water had been tossed into his face. _That _is why Drinian has been withdrawn, ever dashing about his duties, with no time for a merry quip with his friends. We did not confide. For the first time since we slipped our anchorage at Cair Paravel, _I_ did not confide, he amended guiltily. My old friend thinks himself forgotten.

"We think them to be the possessions left by one of our missing lords: will you see if _you_ can identify them, by some mark we may have missed?"

"They're stowed in my cabin." Lucy clasped his hand. "Do say you'll come and look at them, Drinian! Please!"

"Aye." Seized by some of the urgency that affected the girl, Caspian added his entreaty. "What we saw, and felt, in that place makes no sense to me. Will you - as my friend - hear us speak of it?"

The appeal melted all the foolish, human resentments Drinian had felt building as his friend and master had immersed himself the last few days in the company of visitors from another, strange world. "Of course," he said simply, oddly touched that such a small concession on his part should stir so much relief in his companions.

Even the Great Cabin, dominated by the gilded, glowing mural of the Lion on one wall, was cramped with five people inside it. Lucy dragged the rusty objects from a sea chest beneath her bed as Caspian perched on its twin. The boys squeezed onto the other the instant its lid was closed, leaving Lucy the single small stool. Drinian lounged comfortably against the bulkhead, frowning at the remnants of armour she offered to him.

"Narnian, for a certainty," he said, fingering the sword hilt. "And not of a Dwarf's forging! I see no hope, Caspian, of identifying our lost countryman from these."

He turned out the pouch of coins, and his eyebrows lifted. "Ah! Lions and Trees of the late King's minting!"

"I remember wondering about them," Edmund announced, pleased to find one memory returning, needle sharp and bright. "They're _old_ Narnian coinage. Surely - no offence intended - the Telmarine kings created their own?"

"So they did; but occasional attempts were made to breach the divide between _old_ Narnia and _new_." Caspian rubbed his hands, ready to begin a lecture. "Under Caspian the Third, for example; and again, in the reign of Aidan the Second…"

"Cost him his crown _and_ the head that wore it," Drinian grunted, returning the coins to Lucy. "The late King minted coins of the old style toward the end of his reign: an acknowledgement we, the Telmarines, were intruders to the land, and (so my father claimed) a hand extended to the true Narnian population. I fancy _that _won a few more of the court fools to Miraz's party! Not our mysterious lord on Deathwater, of course. What killed him? Could you discover no clue?"

Two of his companions had turned very white at the name; the others, very red. "I see," Drinian sighed. "Light the lamp, Lucy. There's a tale here that will be long in the telling, I dare say."

Haltingly, in awkward fits and starts, the story of the golden stream emerged. Drinian listened: he snorted at the recital of the two kings' dispute, remembered plainly in the telling for the first time by all parties. "I'm sorry I made such an utter fool of myself, Caspian," Edmund offered meekly.

"I rather think I began it, Edmund," answered the other, no less hangdog. "We _were_ about to draw swords on the matter of ownership, weren't we?"

"Probably."

"_Definitely_, Ed," said Eustace. To Drinian, he added: "I never saw such a pair of posturing idiots in my life."

"Glad am I the men were all employed elsewhere," said their captain devoutly. "It does no good for them to see their masters behaving badly! So our poor countryman - whomever he might be - undressed on the ridge and… it hardly bears considering! How easily any one of _us_ might have done as he did: coming upon the place on a hot day, for instance…"

"It may sound callous, but is that not the most monstrous part of it?" asked Caspian. "I am sorry, Drinian; we ought to have confessed all this to you sooner. I believe our minds have been somehow _affected_ by what we discovered."

"Hardly to be wondered at." The great mystery, then, was barely a mystery at all. Drinian was annoyed with himself for allowing an unusual royal silence on the subject of an exploration to trouble him so. "Still, Your Majesties were wise to hurry our departure from the place! We have a stout crew, but with a stream that turns aught you drop in it to gold, the best of them might have been tempted."

Two kings, Lucy thought, never looked more sheepish than Caspian and Edmund in that moment. Eustace grimaced.

"I learned to loathe the sight of gold on Dragon Island," he said, pleased to discover he could now allude to his misadventures there without a shudder. Imagining the golden man as he dived into the inviting waters of the cool, clear stream, feeling his own fingers solidify into metal, knowing a moment of despairing helplessness as hands, arms, shoulders followed, chilled him to the bone. There are worse fates than a brief spell as a dragon, he thought. "So that may be why the thought of turning grass into a fortune leaves me cold. Lu didn't seem affected either. You _recognise_ the temptation, Drinian, but it hardly sounds like you're interested in it."

"I have gold and jewels enough for any man in Narnia, Eustace," came the careless reply. "And I was not subject to the strange air of that place: there are advantages to being captain, and _needed immediately _in half a dozen places at once!"

"I never knew anyone less interested in gold or fine jewels than Drinian," Caspian confided. "Goodness, I'm tired! Lucy can scarce keep her eyes open; come along, we should be leaving her in peace. Boys, I shall join you later. My Lord Drinian, can you bear to share a cup of ale with me, before you retire to your deserved rest?"

"Make yourself comfortable in my cabin, Caspian; I'll fetch the ale." The foul weather showed no sign of abating: there would be a dozen more disagreeable chores tomorrow, and today's were barely done. Yet Drinian, like his ship's noble passengers, felt ridiculously more cheerful as he strode down into the hold in search of a flagon and two cups. If, as the others seemed to believe, there was a curse on the land they called Deathwater, had it not been shown, the way to lift its trace from the Dawn Treader was by honest conversation among friends?


	9. Chapter 9 Patience is a virtue

Author's Note: I adore the Dufflepuds, and I used to wonder, what were Caspian and company doing while Lucy was having all the adventures on their island? I had a ball writing this one; hope it's enjoyable to read

* * *

"_In other words, you are asking this lady to face some danger which you daren't ask your own sisters and daughters to face!"_

_Caspian, the Island of Voices_

"Be careful, Lucy," Caspian urged as she set her foot on the first stair. "I wish there was another way!"

"Bu there's _not_, Caspian dear. I'll be quite all right; make sure _you_ stay out of mischief." She was, Edmund thought, more like Queen Lucy the Valiant of the Golden Age than he should have thought it was possible for his little sister to be. She climbed the long staircase steadily, without ever glancing back to the anxious knot of people - and the Mouse - who watched her.

"What," said Eustace nervously when she was gone from sight, "are the rest of us supposed to do now?"

"Wait, I suppose." There was nothing for it. Caspian turned resolutely away toward the great double doors that led from the magician's house onto an elegant, manicured lawn. "They should have at least allowed one of us to go with her - _they_ have nothing to gain by a failed attempt!"

"Let's wait outside," Edmund agreed. "This place is all so grand and silent - creepy!"

From the shadows of the entrance hall they stepped into the brightness of a summery morning. "Is the little girl gone upstairs?" came the hail from thin air.

"_Queen Lucy _is attending that business you dare not undertake for yourselves," Drinian shot back, riled as much by the uncertainty of where the cry originated as the flagrant disrespect for a Narnian Queen. The air around them filled with laughter.

"We dursen't go near that book again!" the one they called the Chief declared. "An' no more will the little girl, after today!"

Caspian ground his teeth; he was conscious of Reepicheep's rising anger about his knee-level; could hear the scrape of Drinian's sword against its leather scabbard as the taller man gripped and raised the hilt. "Had you but permitted one of us to accompany Her Majesty…"

"No, no, only one can look on the book at a time!"

"That's right, Chief; nobody tells it plainer! Only one can look on the book!"

"I wish we could see them, so we could _avoid_ seeing them, if you see what I mean."

"Clear as day, Eustace," muttered Drinian, reluctantly sliding his sword fully back into its scabbard at Caspian's nod. "However ugly they may be!"

"Ugly as they make 'em, we are!"

"That we are, Chief! Ugliest things you ever saw!"

"Except we don't," Edmund pointed out.

"The young 'un's learning from you, Chief! 'Cept they don't!"

"Because we're invisible, mates, that's why."

"I wish the magician had made them inaudible instead!"

"What's that? What's inaudible?"

"Aye, Chief, we all want to know. What's inaudible, young 'un?"

Eustace positively glowed. "Well, when a thing is inaudible, it has no sound," he began seriously. The Chief Voice cut him off.

"No what? Can't you put it plain, boy?"

"Can't he say what he means, eh Chief?"

"I really _do_ wish you'd let us see if they become visible when a sword strikes them, Caspian!" muttered Edmund

"If something is inaudible," Drinian roared, in his best captain's voice. "You can't hear it! See?"

"Can't hear it, eh? That's what inaudibible is, mates; it's something you can't hear."

"Well said, Chief!" howled the Lesser Voices. "Inaudibible's something you can't hear! They can't have it told 'em any plainer than that!"

"Hurry up, Lu!" said Edmund, to wherever in the magician's house his sister might be. "I don't think I can bear much more of this!"

The Voices offered to fetch refreshment; more for something to do than because they were thirsty, their guests accepted with thanks, wandering to sit on a pair of low wooden benches placed to enjoy the shade offered by a long avenue of evenly-spaced trees leading along the shingle drive from house to shore. "It's a rum do," Edmund said suddenly. "Am I the only one rather nervous about what we'll see, provided Lucy manages to break the invisibility spell?"

"No!" answered Eustace promptly. "And I got the feeling Lucy was worried about that: she was watching the way the dishes hopped to the table last night with _very_ big eyes."

"Giant grasshoppers?" Caspian suggested.

"With boots on?" Drinian enquired. "That thumping sounds like a single foot; and a large one!"

"Our hosts are returning."

"How are we to tell if they all went away, Reep?" Caspian wondered ruefully. "Gentlemen, perhaps you should lay the flagon and cups on the ground, for us to pour our own refreshment?"

"You're a mannerly one, aren't you?"

"You've worked him out, Chief! Mannerly!"

Caspian's jaws cracked painfully with the effort of smiling. Wine sloshed, turning the pale sand around their feet to mud. "We would not distract your warriors from their work, _Chief_," he said, turning in what he hoped might be the direction of the first Voice. "If you have business to attend, we can wait quite comfortably alone for our companion's return."

"Hardly hospitable that'd be, masters and we a folk that like good company!"

"You tell 'em, Chief!"

"I wish he wouldn't," sighed Eustace.

"It would seem Her Majesty's task, in venturing to the magician's chambers, might be less daunting than this remaining to us," squeaked the Mouse.

"I wonder how she's getting on?" Edmund knew it had been twenty minutes, not more, since Lucy had left them. "How far from the main stair is the magician's book room?"

"Can never tell; the corridors are all enchanted."

"Fiendish enchanted!" yelled the hideous chorus. Caspian's head was beginning to ache.

"Will you permit us to walk in these gardens? We have been many months at sea since we had such a pleasure."

"Aye the sea, nasty, cold, wet stuff, ain't it?" The unarguable question had Drinian rolling his eyes, and Eustace trying desperately not to giggle. "Walk where you will, but beware the magician!"

"Watch for 'im!" shouted the Lesser Voices. "Might be invisible, might not."

"We dun't know, lads."

"That we dun't, Chief!"

"I think we understand that much." Caspian stood sharply. "Ow!"

"Sorry indeed, young feller, I was pickin' up your cup."

"That is - most kind; I do apologise for…" Caspian let the sentence die, suddenly realising how ridiculous he would sound, apologising for not seeing an invisible creature. The Voices joined in raucous laughter.

"Aye, couldn't see young Cullo there, eh? That's what bein' invisible does to a chap."

"That it does, Chief!"

"We stumble into each other all the time, don't we, mates?"

"All the time, Chief!"

"Most uncomfortable for you," Drinian sympathised, his innocent tone daring his friends to laugh. Edmund turned his snigger into a hasty coughing fit.

"Never a day goes by that someone don't break an arm on another feller," the Chief Voice informed them, his statement stoutly supported by his fellows. "You walk all you want, masters; the little girl will be gone hours yet; if she comes back at all!"

"If she don't get caught by the magician!" The other Voices expanded with ghastly relish on their Chief's point.

"Lu can look after herself," Edmund promised the others.

"Yes, but a _magician_!" said Caspian. "Oh, I can't bear sitting here _doing_ nothing! Shall we explore the perimeter of the garden?"

They tried to amble: they tried not to wonder how long it had been since Lucy had disappeared into the magician's domain. And the harder they tried not to ask each other "how long?" the more the thought nagged and niggled in the corner of everyone's mind.

The Voices died away; by the muffled thump and the scattering of sand along the straight, pebble-edged paths, Drinian suspected they were content to watch their frustrated guests from a safe distance. "Should have tried bumping into one sooner, Caspian," he murmured to his neighbour. The King snorted.

"It's not easy, bumping into something one can't see, you know!" he joked. "Hang it! I wish I knew how Lucy was managing! There might be a thousand spells to read through before she finds a visibility one!"

"We could be here all night!" Edmund blenched. "Golly, I hope not, that'd mean _another _dinner ending up in my lap! Let's hope the magic book has an index. It's under _V_ for _Visibility_, Lu!" he shouted up toward the leaded windows of the mansion's upper floor.

"I'm bored." Eustace plopped down onto the grass, his bottom lip sticking out almost as far as it had in the old days. "I'd go back and tease the Voices, but they give one a headache."

"They're not easy to have a sensible conversation with," Edmund agreed, squatting at his cousin's side. He plucked a blade of grass and began, methodically, to shred it. "Still, at least the sun's shining. If it had rained, we might have been confined in the house with them - whatever _they _are!"

Caspian stretched on the lawn nearby. "I shall try to snooze," he decided, carefully closing his eyes. "I slept little enough last night, wondering what Lucy would be facing on our behalf today."

Reepicheep wandered off to inspect the array of dainty flowers in the pathside beds. Drinian began to pace the width of the lawn, back and forth as he might the poop on a slow watch. Edmund selected another piece of grass and blew along it, to produce a sharp, piercing note. Caspian sat up abruptly.

"Sorry. I'm not good at waiting."

"I think we all might say the same. How long…"

"Not an hour yet." Drinian measured the sun's height with a practised eye. "Confound this hanging around!"

"The Thumpers are coming back," Eustace announced, and sure enough, the muted thud-thud of a mallet striking the ground was growing louder. "Is she back?"

"We ain't visible yet, are we, young 'un?"

"No we ain't, Chief, no!"

"And do you know how we know we ain't? Because we still can't see each other!"

"I thought you said that was a relief!" yelled Edmund.

"Aye, a proper relief, to be spared the sight of each other's ugly mugs," agreed the Chief. "But we're mortal tired of it now."

"That's right, Chief!"

"Is he ever wrong, I wonder?" mused Reepicheep.

"And if he is, do the others tell him so?" The strangest things, Caspian decided, served to pass the time when one was helplessly _waiting. _The boys laughed. Drinian raised a brow. Even Reepicheep twirled his whiskers in appreciation of the lame joke.

"We're off for our nap, we are."

"They can't ask to be told simpler, Chief!"

"We'd be mightily obliged to you gentlemen if you'd have a care not to tread on us, too."

"If you will be so kind as to tell us where you'll be," said Drinian, carefully. "We will be sure to avoid the area."

"Can't ask for fairer than that, lads, can we?"

"Can't indeed, Chief! As fair an offer as you could want!" yelled the Chorus.

"We sleep in the shade of the house, we do; stay on the paths, and you shan't stand on us."

"We'll be careful to do that," Edmund promised. "I mean, we'll stay on the paths!" he added, into the babble of confused Voices that questioned quite _exactly_ what he meant. "I bet they agree with each other in their sleep, too!" he added under his breath. "Let's go back up to the house ourselves: surely she can't be much longer?"

They had an anxious wait of what seemed like an hour (in fact it was barely fifteen minutes) before scampering footsteps above had them all straining to see up the stairs. "It's all right!" Lucy shouted, as they surged to meet her. "I've met the magician - he's lovely! And I've seen Aslan! And they're visible again, come and look! I never saw anything so charming! Goodness, you all look very _grim_! Have you been worrying about me?"

"Oh, no!" Edmund grated. "We've had a positive _picnic_! Of _course_ we've been worried! You were gone for _ages_!"

"No I wasn't." Smilingly, she pointed to the grandfather clock standing off to one side of the hall. "Look! I've been an hour and a half at the most. Honestly, you _men_! Have you never heard it said that patience is a virtue?"

"Then Your Majesty had best be virtuous for all of us," replied Drinian, first to recover his breath in the face of rank audacity. "Shall we go and meet our hosts? I imagine _they_ will think the last _hour and a half_ time well used!"


	10. Chapter 10 Nightmare scenarios

"_I hope it will never be told in Narnia that a company of noble and royal persons in the flower of their age… were afraid of the dark."_

_Reepicheep, on the edge of the Darkness_

"Fools! This is the land where _dreams_ – your worst dreams, your nightmares! – come true!"

Even as the words assaulted his tingling ears, Caspian's mind froze around them, his flesh beginning to crawl. _Her_ bony fingers wrapped around the taffrail, wisps of grey cloth and skin barely distinguishable one from the other. Blood oozed under the nails, the only proof of her being truly living.

Behind, her, _its_ claws scratched and gouged at the planking of the hull; he could hear its voice, hoarse and rasping, the panting sounds it made as the transformation completed. _Drinian will be furious, claw marks in his ship,_ he realised, stupidly. Then, gaunt and ashen, _her_ face appeared. With an agility not to be expected in her kind, she vaulted the rail and stood, not three yards from him, arm raised, mouth open. Ready to summon the demon.

"No!" he muttered, powerless to force numb fingers into position around his useless sword hilt "Please no, for the Lion's sake! Not _him_!"

"Look!" Eustace's whimper cut through the deeper rumble of general anxiety. "'Round the mainmast; they're circling. Lucy! Lucy, watch out, their breath… my hands! It's starting! Stop it! Leave me alone!"

While his cousin tried to cower beside the ship's wheel, Edmund stood stock-still, save for the tongue which flickered repeatedly over his lips. Something sweet, sugared and unmistakable brought vomit surging up in his throat. _Turkish Delight_.

_That_ Turkish Delight: gooey, addictive, temptation in edible form.

He tensed, aware of the presence behind him, the chilling in the air. Any moment _now_, that long, snowy hand would curl around his shoulder. "_Edmund_."

"Edmund!" She meant it as a shout, but Lucy doubted if her frightened croak would reach the man beside her at the fighting top, still less her brother, far below on the poop. "They're all 'round the foot of the mast," she whispered, the bow beneath her fingers twitching with her every tiny shudder. "Those _faces_, and ugh! They're slimy and horrid and – oh, no! They can climb! Bowman, look! They're crawling up the mast!"

"I won't do it!" At the foot of the main mast, Rhince rocked in a terrified, hairy ball, eyes popping between tobacco-stained fingers. "You can't make me! Cap'n! They'm comin' down the mains'l, Sir! Get away – get back! They'll never let us go!"

"Never let us go!" Above the hubbub the shrill scream of the stranger sounded exultant. "Of course we shall never escape the terrors of the Dark Place! Never!"

Caspian backed away, but not from the demented wreck of a human; his glassy stare was fixed higher, on the mottled face of a burly, once-handsome man wearing a crooked coronet. "You are not real," he muttered, through chattering teeth. "You died; I saw it! Depart, demon! You are not real!"

His feet kept shuffling, until his back made contact with something solid, though neither he nor the solid thing noticed it. In fact, the solid thing, usually addressed as Drinian, was rooted to the spot, staring with cloudy, sightless eyes at a patch of damp darkness spreading across the deck.

His hands were linked behind his back; he could feel thin fishing wire cutting, feel the blood beginning to trickle down his wrists. He screwed up his eyes, trying to stop his ears to the shouts, the screams and the groans. Somewhere close, an order was shouted.

The patch of darkness on deck pulsed and spread again.

"Not real!" Edmund panted, forcing himself forward, on his toes, away from her icily outstretched hand. "You're dead, I tell you! I know you're not real – _none of this is real_!"

"Not real." Somewhere, nearby, he heard the faintest thread of another, barely human, voice: and, miracle of wonders, he recognised it.

"Caspian!" he shouted desperately, through the thickness of nausea in his tight throat. "It's not real! We're pulling them out from our nightmares! Fight it!"

"You are not real!" Shouting the words made it possible to believe the glowering menace looming closer was a fantasy. Caspian lunged forward, his arm striking straight through, making the image shimmer. "You are not real!" he yelled again, more certain this time. "Together, shipmates! They are not real!"

"Not real." The whipcords around his wrists seemed to snap with the dissipation of fog in his brain. "Man the oars! Topmen aloft! Boson, a good, strong stroke!"

He flung himself at the wheel, where Pittencream quivered, still trapped by his own terrors. Even the finest navigator needs a clue to steer by, but by bringing the ship full about, away from the gentle swish of breaker on shore, he must surely have the Dawn Treader on_ roughly_ the right heading.

The galleon lurched under his command, oddly sluggish. _The damage she suffered in the fight,_ he thought, panic gripping him a moment before King Edmund's desperate chant cut through, reminding him of where he was. _Dawn Treader_.

Still, the voices echoed in his head, and the reek of blood and death struck at the back of his throat hard enough to make him choke. He gripped the wheel hard, forced his wandering mind to focus. _Which way is west, for the Lion's sake?_

"Move back, demon!" Caspian had his sword free now, raised before him, a greater menace to his oblivious shipmates than the mirage that _would_ solidify in defiance of his better judgement. "I saw you fall – hag, away from Us, We are Narnia!"

"We're goin' in circles!" mumbled Peridan, at the foot of the poop ladder. "Gettin' pulled in… can't he see, we're steerin' straight for the flames?"

"Flames!" Another voice bellowed out. "We're afire!"

"What nonsense is this?" Mice, Edmund realised, did not dream. Reepicheep stood, whiskers a-twirl with indignation, bristling in the midst of mayhem. "Your Majesties all! Is this insanity to be permitted unchecked? The honour of Narnia..."

"Shut up, Reep, you're drawing their attention." Eustace stretched out a trembling hand to clutch into the animal's dark fur. "I can't scratch them off!"

"Scratch off _what_?"

"The scales! Look, I'm covered in them!"

"Courage, Eustace." Caspian's voice was dry and cracking, but the boy's terror served to shake him a fraction from his own. "Drinian! What do you mean, flinging the ship about so?"

"Look!" Circling the masthead was a large and ghostly white shape. "Albatross!"

It seemed to Edmund that every head lifted; and as the Dawn Treader heeled in answer to her captain's command, into the wake of the bird's wing-beats, an odd, warm sensation started up in his belly. "I can't believe we're using a _bird_ for navigation," Eustace muttered.

"I don't think it's just a bird, somehow," said his cousin, as the cloying blackness began to thin into a creamy fog, then a mere, damp mist. "I say! We're clear!"

"Where've they gone?" wondered Peridan. "Them flames, didn't nobody see?"

Eustace squinted up into the perfect, sunny sky, then down at his hands; podgy, browned slightly by the unusual amount of time spent out of doors in hot weather, and entirely free of glinting, harsh scale. "Lucy!" he called, trusting the wide-eyed girl scurrying down from the fighting top to be honest. "Am I human?"

"As near as you've ever been." Her bottom lip was bloodied, where it had been bitten to hold in the whimpers, and her legs felt wobbly, but she was smiling, bow slung over her shoulder, as she reached them. "That was pretty horrid, wasn't it?"

Edmund licked his lips, delighting in the raw taste of sea air, unsullied by sugar. "Ghastly," he admitted. "Caspian, are you all right?"

"Aye." The King sheathed his sword, still staring at the spot where his nightmares had gathered. "That they should dissolve so speedily…" he added, to himself, before his manners re-asserted themselves. "Now, we must tend to our friend here,"

The Lord Rhoop would never have been identified by his brothers-in-arms, of that Caspian was certain, but after years trapped in an endless nightmare, was it to be wondered at? The older man hardly dared believe, until they all had reassured him very seriously, that he was truly safe and amongst friends. And only one boon did he demand of his rightful sovereign. "Never send me back there!"

He pointed dramatically toward the ship's stern, and they all turned, not without an inward quiver, to see…

Nothing.

Clear ocean, bright sky, not the faintest trace of the horror that had once been. "Why!" cried the Lord Rhoop. "Your Majesty has destroyed it!"

"I don't think it was us," said Lucy, by whose ear the king of the seabirds had murmured its command for courage. Edmund nodded.

"Aslan," he whispered. "I felt…"

"Warmth," Caspian concluded. Eustace nodded.

"Me, too."

"And I, Sire," added Rynelf, from the foot of the ladder. Lucy beamed.

"I knew he wouldn't abandon us," she said. "But Caspian, shouldn't we get Lord Rhoop some clothes – there must be something aboard to fit him; and some food."

"Coffee," said Edmund.

"A tot wouldn't go amiss," added Rhince, bustling up from the belly of the ship with a broad grin, now the crisis was past. The Dawn Treader began to heel again under gentle persuasion, turning the dragon's painted gaze fearlessly east once more. "Cap'n?"

"Hm?" Though he guided the ship's movement smoothly back onto her proper course, it seemed to Caspian his old friend had no clue of what he was about. "Aye, very good, Rhince. Very good."

"Rynelf, see the Lord Rhoop below; what so ever his lordship may require, see to it, in my name." Caspian cocked his head. "My Lord Drinian, is aught amiss with the polish of our deck?"

"No, no, Sire." Folly to look for the bloodstains: another ship, another time. Drinian forced up his head and smiled, just, to his assembled passengers. "Who would have thought, in former years, Rhoop had twice the bulk of the late Lord Restimar?" he mused.

"Drinian! You _have_ to be joking!" exclaimed Eustace, with a thought for the muscled statue at the bottom of Deathwater. Caspian, though not a whit deceived by the show of merriment, shook his head.

"Indeed he does not, Master Eustace: though by a few moments' exposure to the horrors he has known so long, I believe I comprehend his _drastic_ change in appearance!"

"So do I!" agreed Edmund heartily, as at a nod of assent from the captain, Rhince hollered the order to release a much-needed tot of rum to every man. "I – probably I oughtn't ask, but…"

"What did we see?" Eustace suspected his shrieks about scales had betrayed enough not to fret at further loss of face. "Dragons, of course. A whole flock of them. Do dragons come in flocks, or hives? I could feel their breath – all damp and smelly and smoky – on my skin. I – I thought…"

"You were turning into a dragon again? Oh, poor Eustace!" Lucy gave him a hug, half surprised he made no attempt to push her away. "There were great big monster things clambering up the mainmast after me," she confided. "With big, hairy faces, like wolves. You remember Maugrim, the Witch's chief of police, Ed? It was _his_ head on a snake's body, and with back legs all knobbly and splayed, froggy. How ridiculous is that?"

"At least you only got the police chief," Edmund muttered. "_I_ got the Witch herself; _and_ her horrid, sickly, glorious Turkish Delight. She was telling me to – to…"

"Edmund, that's _awful_," Lucy sympathised, and he was thankful to see, she understood quite _how_ awful that confrontation with his guilty past had been. "Do we all have something real in our worst nightmares, do you think?"

"I do, for a certainty." The children appeared lighter for having confessed; suddenly Caspian felt less foolish about doing the same. "It was Miraz," he said, bluntly. "You recall, Edmund, those friends of Nikabrik's, in the dark and the cold beneath Aslan's How?"

"The hag and the werewolf that were going to summon _her_, when Trumpkin and Peter and I broke in," the boy remembered them only too well. "The wolf took a chunk out of your arm before we managed to kill it."

"They were here, on the poop; but not calling on _her_ power." Caspian shivered. "They called up the usurper - Miraz stood there, not half a pace from me! He never spoke, yet I _felt_ his thoughts; that I am no true king, no _good_ king, and he would be rid of me, as he was my father. I never felt such fear of him, alive, as I did then!"

"I suppose we all magnify the things we're scared of in our nightmares," said Edmund sensibly. "And I don't see, Lu, why our worst fears - my falling under the Witch's influence, Scrubb turning into a dragon, Caspian facing Miraz, you and your creepy-crawly phobia - to say nothing of Maugrim - shouldn't come into it. Somebody thought the ship was on fire, didn't they? That sounds like a proper sailor's nightmare to me."

"I think that was Rynelf, King Edmund," Caspian agreed. "Though had it been my Lord Drinian, I should not have been surprised. What could be more terrible to our captain than the destruction of his beloved ship?"

Drinian thrust a hand back through his tousled black hair. "Tiger," he said simply. Caspian gaped.

"Oh," he said, as the children stared, nonplussed. "Thank you, Rhince, I shall take a small tot, though you know I have not the true tar's appreciation for the substance."

"No more's the Cap'n, Your Majesty." Rhince grinned at his commander, receiving a wry nod in return. "We've slung a hammock for Lord Rhoop, sir; seems 'e wants nowt but to be left alone."

"Then we shall oblige him until he feels fit for company. Take the helm, Rhince: I ought to take a tour of the ship. No, Your Majesties, no cause to come; the men might speak more free to their captain alone."

"As you please, my Lord." Caspian chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully. "Tiger," he murmured. "Do you know, though I have heard its legend, Drinian has never actually told what happened on that unhappy ship."

"His first Archenlandish ship?" asked Lucy, puzzled.

"Must have been something pretty ugly," said Eustace. "I never knew Drinian could look so pale! What _do_ you know, Caspian?"

"Why, what all the world knows; that at the height of the Pirate War - between Archenland and Terebinthia, which has been a nest of villains since Edmund and Lucy ruled Narnia - the frigate Tiger was attacked by four of the vessels calling themselves the Terebinthian Fleet..."

"The King's still using the pirates as a navy?" Edmund asked.

"Better say, the pirates are still using the King!" Caspian corrected indignantly. "As I was saying; four of their number assaulted the gallant frigate Tiger and destroyed her. Most of her crew died; a bare handful, Drinian amongst them, survived. How it occurred, I have never asked, for he has never indicated any desire to tell."

"I don't think I'd want to know, thanks." Lucy's voice trembled. "I remember hearing stories of ships attacked by Terebinthian pirates, and I think I should sooner face Maugrim again than _that_."

"I'm jolly glad we shan't have to face any of them again," Eustace knocked back his rum with barely a shudder, instantly strengthened by its warming effects. "Pirates, witches dragons and all! Ugh! That must be the nastiest adventure we've had yet!"

"I doubt any man will dispute with that," murmured Caspian, deliberately omitting any _Beast_ from his statement. Reepicheep's tail thrashed in warning of his disapproval.

"Are Your Majesties all so afraid of what is gone?" he enquired, courteous as ever, though they all heard the strain in his voice. "That your very _nights_ can be haunted by them?"

"Nasty things can seem even nastier in the dark, Reep," Edmund promised. "Phew! Bet you a shilling to a penny, none of us will sleep tonight!"

Nobody, he thought, seemed willing to wager against him.


	11. Chapter 11 The navigators

"_Heigh-ho, I could sleep the clock round myself!"_

_Caspian, escaping the Dark Island_

Several days after their escape from the Island of Dreams, with the Dawn Treader scudding along at a fine pace, five figures stood in line on her main deck, wooden instruments raised to their eyes. On either end of the line were the tall figures of the ship's Captain and Mate; between them, much smaller and more inclined to fidget, stood Lucy, Edmund and Eustace. Caspian, who had long ago given up any pretension he might have had to ability in the art they were practising, rested against the ladder to the poop deck, content to laze in the sunshine and wait to tease his friends for making as much of a botch job of their lesson as he once had.

Setting down his sextant (for such was the instrument named) Drinian seized a slate and chalk, rapidly scrawling a succession of numbers. A second later and Rhince too was scribbling furiously, his brow deeply furrowed with concentration.

More slowly, the three children lowered their devices and set about scratching out their sums: Caspian was mildly relieved to observe in them a complete lack of the casual confidence that marked the actions of the two experienced seamen. Eustace nibbled the end of his chalk, oblivious to its taste. Lucy rubbed out furiously. Edmund hissed, hesitated, squared his shoulders, and ploughed on.

By which time, Drinian had swooshed a dramatic line beneath his final calculation. A raised eyebrow, a nod, and Rhince was beside him, comparing his slate to the other's. The two men glanced at each other's answers, and smiled.

The Mate bustled away, passing the lounging King with a brisk greeting, on his way to record the Dawn Treader's present position, her speed, course steered, and the distance covered since yesterday's noon sight had been taken, in the ship's log. Drinian would check and sign it later, Caspian knew: theirs was a journey into the unknown, his friend had told him severely, when he had dared question the need for such scrupulous record-keeping. And no man would accuse the Lord High Admiral of Narnia of failing to follow his own meticulous regulations!

"I _think_ I've done it, Drinian." Edmund scratched his nose, getting chalk all over it. Lucy, her eyebrows still drawn tight together from the effort of _thinking_, turned her slate to his.

"Golly! One of us has gone wrong somewhere!" she cried, for by her calculation, the ship was at least eight degrees further north than Edmund allowed. "And _you're_ awfully quiet, Eustace!"

"If _either_ of you are right, I've spoiled my good run," her cousin told her petulantly. "After three successive days of perfect navigation, it would be too bad to have _mucked up now_, as Rhince would say!"

Drinian laughed heartily at the impersonation of his deputy's put-upon tone. "If you're awry, so too are Rhince and myself," he said, with all the confidence of one who knew he was no such thing. "Aye, latitude and course are exact: you're a mite out in your estimation of speed - a knot, by my reckoning - but otherwise… we may have to promote you, Eustace!"

"Put me on an oar then, Drinian, because I've gone _hopelessly _wrong somewhere." Edmund scowled at his offending slate. "How the devil did I get _that_?"

"I'm only a little way out." Lucy was quite relieved. "What did I get wrong, Drinian?"

He took her slate, frowned for a moment, then nodded. "Easy enough; you see, Queen Lucy, your subtraction is out by one - make _this_ seven instead of six, and the equation balances perfectly."

Aware that a handful of malingerers were eavesdropping, ready to convey the result of the apprentice navigators' lesson to their fellows, he raised his voice a little. "As for King Edmund here… Your Majesty will have company in the galley, should that crisis ever befall us! You are not the only member of this ship's company that struggles to take a decent sight!"

"A relief indeed, my Lord," said Caspian formally. Edmund stamped his foot.

"Bother!" he said. "I can't cook!"

"No more can I; but our captain assures me for a replacement galley master, _that_ is more an advantage than a disqualification."

Muffled snorts of laughter rose from the loiterers. "I worked so hard in maths last term," Lucy reflected. "And I can _still_ make a _silly_ mistake like that!"

"A misjudgement in calculation can be easily amended," The mathematics of navigation, as natural as breathing now, had not come so readily to Drinian in his early days at sea; a source of frequent frustration, when the other arts of seamanship had always been so easy, he wondered why others struggled with them. "A sight wrongly taken, _that_ cannot be repaired. King Edmund, take another, let me - ah!"

He seized the boy's arm, brought the elbow down from its absurdly high position, then with the flat of his hand pressed down Edmund's head. "With the sextant so strangely held, Sire, I wonder you could see to take an angle!" he exclaimed. "Now, read off the angle of sun to horizon again."

"Oh!" Edmund was unsure whether he should be relieved to be reading the dial beneath the sight so easily, or mortified for being caught in so elementary an error. "It looks quite different _now_. Here, Lu, hand me the slate, will you?"

With his sleeve he wiped out the first set of equations and set about scrawling a second; quicker, more confident, he had the sums completed in a trice (having always been better at arithmetic than Lucy). "How's that?" he asked_. I wonder if this is how Peter feels, waiting for the Professor to check his prep for the exam?_

"Good, Your Majesty," Drinian approved, chalking a large tick across the slate. As the boy whooped his delight, and Eustace began to brag about getting things _right first time_, the Dawn Treader's captain allowed himself a moment of smug satisfaction. His ruse to distract their passengers from the lingering terror of the Isle of Dreams had worked better than he had ever dared hope.

Not half the ship's company was sleeping properly, he guessed, after their experience in the mysterious darkness. The fascination of watching their royal guests struggling to master some of a sailor's tasks had given every man a new subject to discuss. Their achievements (or otherwise) were praised (or pitied). Jokes like Caspian's about the galley master's cooking skills would be passed from stem to stern. Minds would be dragged from the shattered wreck that was the Lord Rhoop after his years in _that place_. The air about the decks would seem to grow brighter.

Yes, Drinian was pleased with the result of his careless inspiration. He said as much to his sovereign, when they were left leaning together against the starboard rail amidships.

"Perhaps we might interest Rhoop in navigation?" Caspian had come from an hour's conversation with his father's friend. He hoped his visit had raised the elder Narnian's spirits: it had had quite the opposite effect on his own.

Drinian snorted. "Seems to me we'd be wasting our time!"

"Now, I know he's not the liveliest of shipmates, my Lord…" Caspian began, really surprised by his friend's rudeness. "But after all that he endured…"

Drinian raised his hands. "It _is_ wholly understandable," he agreed pacifically. "My meaning was only this; those seven friends of our fathers showed not the smallest interest in their ship - did not Bern admit it? - or the practicalities of their journey. A Galmian ship, a hired crew… they were mere passengers, without interest in _how_ the ship sailed, or what their companions did. And _that_, the sailor in me cannot fathom at all!"

"You have shown exemplary patience, old friend, in bearing with the _damnable lubbers_ cluttering _your_ decks," Caspian told him. Drinian gave a rich, deep roar of laughter.

"I have done no such thing; as Your Majesty knows, having felt the rough edge of my tongue more often than most!" he bellowed. "Nay, Sire, your courtier's manners have been less than _courtly _on too many occasions! The patience has been yours, suffering my rudeness without complaint or (that I could see) offence."

"You have been - brusque, at times," Caspian acknowledged, conscious of Rynelf, scrubbing the deck behind them and eagerly recording every word. "But we have been a nuisance to you and your crew; come, if I'm to make an admission, so must you! Shall we take a tour of our good ship, Captain?"

Recognising the royal code for _I have something troubling me, _Drinian answered with a deep, graceful bow. "I am at Your Majesty's service," he said.

Still, it took the whole tour of the upper decks and a descent into the hold, where they paused to check the condition of the great oak water barrels, before the King could express the troublesome matter. "How much _longer_, Drinian?" he all but wailed, thumping his fist into the sloping planks of the lower hull in his frustration. "Six months of ploughing on east, east, with the wind behind us, Reep's dreadful ditty about _sweet waves _ringing in our ears… I want to go home!"

A severe case of homesickness. The thought in Drinian's head had a habit of tripping off his tongue a second later. "The wonder of it is, that it should be so long in afflicting so inexperienced a traveller," he added, guiding his friend forward to perch on one of the long benches for oarsmen across the breadth of the ship's body. "'Tis natural; every man jack of us has been touched by it, I dare say. The novelty, most likely, has protected you longer than the rest."

"Is that all? So simple?" The weight that, on leaving Rhoop, had been close to crushing, lifted a smidgen from his shoulders, and Drinian, watching him sit straighter, cursed himself for not observing the minute signs in Caspian he had watched for and acted upon amongst his crew. "I swore a vow, I know; and I have been selfish, barely _thinking_ of Narnia as we few have tumbled from discovery to crisis and on to adventure. Now… Drinian, I can think of nothing else!"

"Happens to us all, Caspian. And if the novelty of months at sea has protected you so long, I suppose, the blow must naturally strike with greater force, _when_ it comes."

"You too?" It was hard, Caspian thought, to credit. Perpetually busy, always encouraging, his friend had been the model of confident determination through the whole course of their quest. Yet, had he not as many reasons to pine than any other man? "Do you find yourself yearning for a glimpse of green Etinsmere - for the smile of your sweet Daniela - and feeling this - terrible _hopelessness_ that they are so far away?"

"I should be less than human, had I not those longings," replied Drinian simply. "But - being the hardened old tar I am - I know they come, and I wait for them to pass. Ah, Edmund - Lucy! Our shipmate has a sudden case of sea-blight."

"You're missing Narnia all of a sudden, eh?" Edmund squeezed onto the bench at Caspian's side. Lucy, tucking her feet under her beside Drinian, nodded.

"I thought you were quiet, this morning," she said sympathetically. "Goodness, I never miss the other place - England, I mean - when I'm here, but I do remember the awful, achy feeling in the pit of my stomach when we first sailed for the Lone Islands. We were only gone three months, but oh! How I missed Cair Paravel and all our friends!"

"I doubt anybody's ever away from home more than a few weeks without feeling it, to some degree," said Edmund. His eyes narrowed. "_You _must know all about it, Drinian."

"Just what I was saying when you came down." The nights were the worst; the still, silent nights that followed on the tail of a crisis. The achingly sweet torment of longing to hear her voice, feel the cool brush of her hand against his cheek. "I pined for Narnia all the ten years I was exiled, Caspian; I miss her still, the woods of Etinsmere, the great empty moors on the northern frontier… but I never _really_ knew loneliness at sea before this."

"Daniela." Caspian smiled on her name. "My Lord Drinian left his enchanting betrothed in Narnia to command our quest; a sacrifice I ought never have asked of any man."

"Aye, Daniela. She knew - as we all knew, Caspian! - that there was none other in Narnia could captain the royal ship. And though I'll only cease to long for a sight of her when we're close to the Cair, and the fear that she might have found some contemptible lubber to take my place while we're gone can loom…"

"Drinian, for shame! The lady - mistress of Glasswater province, daughter to another of my father's murdered friends - is lost in love with you!" Caspian protested, startled into his first real laugh of the day.

"I should not have given my place on this ship to any other man," Drinian concluded seriously, though his eyes twinkled in the hold's musty gloom. "You see, Caspian, mine is the dilemma of the sailor: on land, I yearn for the sway of a ship and the salt taste of the sea on my tongue. A few weeks at sea, and I wish for naught but green fields and the comforts of my manor. Marriage will change that not a whit, as Daniela declares she understands; time will tell on _that_!

"As to your homesickness, there's no cure but time, and occupation. You'll know the times it affects me most; those are the mornings I discover a dozen duties unattended, and drive poor Rhince to distraction with more drills for the men and more unnecessary tasks for myself! Now, shall we return to deck? I dare say the men ought to be tested at the guns; we've not run them out these last six weeks at least."

"I've started _you_ off now, haven't I?" asked the king remorsefully. Drinian shrugged.

"I shall shake it off, Caspian; and the instant another novelty hoves into sight, so shall you! Now, let's be away. Edmund, as Eustace appears to have your measure as a navigator, how would you care to try your skill as a gunner? We're lightly armed - two cannon a side, bow and stern as you know - but with good discipline amongst the crew, we can defend ourselves well enough. And what of you, Caspian? There's naught like the thunder of a pair o' ten-pounders to clear the head!"


	12. Chapter 12 In every end is a beginning

Author's Note: This is the final vignette of the series. I'm halfway through an AU sequel that will see Edmund, Lucy and Eustace travelling back with the Dawn Treader to Narnia; as well as Drinian's story! Huge thanks to those who've taken the trouble to review, especially Almyra and Asphalt Angel.

"_Blooming lilies, Your Majesty!"_

_Rynelf, the Last Sea_

The gradual accumulation of floral debris did nothing to slow the Dawn Treader's progress, a fact Edmund noted with some nervousness. "Might it not be time to pull us out of this awful current?" he asked.

"And set the men to the oars with, perhaps, another hundred leagues of sailing before us?" Drinian's voice floated irritably up from the boat towing astern, where he was supervising the untangling of the rudder from pristine petal and thick, shiny leaf for the tenth time in five days. "The Star told us his was the last land we should encounter; I should sooner have had precise information of the sea's conditions!"

"I doubt the Star knows what a mariner might deem important, my Lord," said Caspian, leaning over the aft rail to watch them hefting armfuls of shredded leaf clear of the hull.

"Gettin' worse the deeper into this mess we go, Sire." Hofian held the boat steady while Drinian led the climb back aboard, the job done. "An' the smell o' these things, too! Permission to take lookout duty back aboard, Cap'n?""

"Granted, Hofian; and thank you, men." Drinian wiped his hands against the front of his worn leather jerkin. "A sounding every tenth minute, remember; and report the moment you feel bottom at fifty fathoms."

"Aye, Sir." Hofian's pale grey eyes brightened as he scrambled aboard, and Peridan began the sweaty business of hauling in the boat. Drinian nodded a dismissal before shepherding his passengers aft, toward the poop and his turn on watch.

"Cap'n, Sir." Rhince loomed up beside the mainmast, jaw stuck out and eyes cast down. Drinian groaned.

"Very well, Master Mate, tell me the worst," he instructed, flicking a glance to Caspian that plainly said, _leave this to me, Sire_. "Has the galley master mutinied for want of activity, now we've this water to sustain us? Is the Boson at odds with the Bowman?"

"'S the men, Sir." Rhince was not intended to be a whisperer, Edmund thought, leaning back against the starboard rail. "They're a mite worried, see."

"That we are in uncharted seas, unable to judge the depth o' water before us, approaching the World's Edge without notion of what we might find there, and that infernal _Mouse_ twittering his interminable ditty at the prow," Drinian recited, not noticeably disheartened by his deputy's sombre report. "Why the troubled look, Rhince? Are you not a touch _alarmed _yourself?"

"Aye, Sir." It had often seemed to Eustace the Captain delighted in disconcerting his sturdy deputy. "An' I dun't know what to tell 'em, Sir, when they grumble to me."

"No more should I," Drinian agreed. "Though it might ease their anxieties to know, the instant our leadsman feels the seabed at less than fifty, we'll draw out of this blessed current and coast under what little breeze might spring up, for so long as it takes. His Majesty made a vow to seek the End of the World: I made one no less solemn to turn this ship westward when he had done so."

"Aye, Sir, but the men are frettin'; tales o' great seas washin' over the Edge, an' endless falls into Aslan's Country…."

"As I might have said before, Your Majesties," said Drinian solemnly, "_drat that Mouse_!"

"I shall speak with Sir Reepicheep, Rhince." Caspian bit his bottom lip so hard he could taste blood; Eustace was openly grinning, and Edmund didn't dare meet the eye of either sailor. "Should we hear yet _again _of the fires said to burn perpetually around the world's rim…"

"'E's not so fond o' that tale, Your Majesty," Rhince confided tiredly. "'S stories o' fallin' forever the bla – _blessed _nuisance likes best."

"The Star did say," Lucy put in, voice only wavering a fraction to betray her amusement, "that we had to sail as far east _as our ship would take us_, and _then_ leave one of our number behind. Surely that means the sea level drops too much for a galleon to reach the _very_ end of the world."

"That's true." Edmund grinned as Eustace slapped the startled girl hard on the back. "God old Lu, spotting what we'd all missed. We _can't_ go over the edge, Rhince; tell the men that."

"And tell the Mouse, too," Drinian growled, sending a glare the length of the ship. "I knew morale had fallen, Your Majesties; not to be wondered at, given our position, but still… I'll have that creature in irons yet!"

Rhince hastened back to his duties, and the passengers followed Drinian to his, all of them feeling lighter about the heart with Lucy's realisation to cheer them. "Never considered it myself," said Caspian, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb Rynelf at the helm. Lucy giggled.

"Neither had I, until that moment; I'm still not sure I was right to say it."

"Of course you were!"

"Aye, King Edmund, aught that quells alarm below decks is best said, whether it be true or no." Drinian tipped back his head, drinking in the faint breeze that ruffled their hair. "For my part, I shall be happy if these infernal _lilies_ would thin out, or better still, fade away! How's a sailor to judge the depth of water through this mess, eh?"

"We've not even got a name on the chart for this place, yet," Lucy realised. Every new discovery had been recorded on the magician's map, which Drinian kept rolled in his cabin for safety. "It's _got_ to have a name."

Drinian could have offered a choice selection, but in the presence of a lady he kept them to himself. "Lily Lake," said Caspian.

"That didn't just trip off the tongue, did it?" Edmund challenged. The King blinked.

"What? I confess, I had given the matter some thought, King Edmund."

"But it's not a lake," argued Eustace, who could not shake off pedantry as well as he had surliness. "One can see the other _side_ of a lake; it's got a shore, and reeds, and things. This is a sea!"

"Or an ocean!" Lucy countered.

"We can't really be sure they're _actually_ lilies, either," added Edmund. "Oh, _I _don't know what else to call them, or _this_. Mother's always said I've no imagination."

"Flower Patch?"

"More than a patch, Eustace; five days without sign of clear water!"

"Silver Sea?"

"_That_ I like," Caspian decided. "With the sunlight upon them - who in Narnia would imagine the sun might be so _bright_? - the petals strike the eye as silver more than white. Aye, Silver Sea; unless another can conceive of a better, such shall be this place's name!"

"A fine name, Sire!" Reepicheep pattered up the poop ladder. "Silver _Scented_ Sea might, perhaps, be deemed more _accurate_."

"And too much, Reep! No sign of it ending?"

"Nor sign of Aslan's Country, King Edmund." Briefly the Mouse appeared downcast. "Though I do not despair. How ever many leagues separate us from that blessed place, we shall traverse them."

"Ah." Caspian coughed, uncomfortably aware of Lucy's fidget and the narrowed dark eyes of Drinian upon him. "Be so good as to remember, Sir Reepicheep, others have their thoughts fixed upon _another_ land, perhaps farther away than your goal. Not every Narnian here present is so eager to greet the Lion in his own land."

Reepicheep's whiskers twirled. "What higher honour could be sought, Sire?"

"The wives, families and sweethearts of our shipmates might dispute that question," Caspian reminded him, both hands raised.

"In some cases, all three parties might," Drinian murmured. Edmund's brows shot up.

"Do tell, Captain!"

"Don't be such a gossip, Ed!" chided Lucy automatically. Reepicheep gave one of his flourishing bows.

"Never did it occur to me, Your Majesty, that discussion of my heart's desire might cause distress to my shipmates. I had thought every true Narnian must be safe in the knowledge of the Great Lion's good grace to protect him."

"I've no doubt the men all feel that, Reep, but don't chat on so about _endless waterfalls_ in front of them, there's a good fellow." Caspian, feeling himself lectured by a subject, was incapable of response, allowing Edmund to intervene smoothly. "And they'd feel a good deal better if we weren't in the middle of these heavenly smelling flowers!"

"I take them as a carpet, where no feet before ours have trod." The Mouse was getting poetic, and Lucy knew when he did that, Reepicheep also got loud. "Guiding the faithful traveller to his rest at Aslan's paw."

"It may well be so," agreed Caspian placatingly. "But we have many a traveller, no less faithful, that longs to rest his foot before his own Narnian hearth. As a kindness to our harassed Captain, pray moderate your excitement at a _nearer goal_ in the presence of his crew."

"Your Lordship may depend upon my discretion." It was to Drinian's credit, Eustace thought, he maintained a steady countenance at the declaration.

"Excellent!" Caspian compensated for want of conviction with excess of enthusiasm, and visibly recoiled from it. "Now, what say you to a game of chess? Queen Lucy has beaten you once this week; grant your King the chance to equal her noble achievement!"

* * *

The next day, Drinian ordered the Dawn Treader pulled out of the rapid band of easterly current. "Seabed's rising sharply, Sire," he informed Caspian, encountering the gentleman at the hatchway. "We've twenty fathoms less beneath our keel in an hour's sailing. At this rate, we cannot go beyond nightfall."

"We are in your hands, Captain." Caspian looked solemn, his gaze sliding over Drinian's shoulder and on toward the eastern horizon. "To break the enchantment which holds our compatriots, we must continue as far as we safely may."

"And that we'll do, Sire. Rynelf and Peridan will take turns at lookout; soundings every second minute. Should the seabed approach as near as ten fathoms, I must recommend that we anchor before darkness."

"Your advice will be followed, in whatever circumstance," Caspian promised, breaking into a smile at the minimal relaxing of his companion's stance. "Come, my Lord! Do you think your sovereign so great a fool as to disregard a professional opinion in these affairs?

"I'll make no answer there, if it please Your Majesty." Drinian let his voice carry to the nearest group of men, hard at work polishing the main deck with water and friable sandstone blocks until the planking shone. Somebody sniggered, and the two friends shared a smile.

"Inform us regularly of what's to be done." The King turned away first, keeping his eye on the point before them where sky and ocean met. "Lucy! Eustace, Edmund! Do you hear? Drinian doubts we can continue much farther."

"Reep's putting another coat of wax onto the coracle already." Eustace knocked back his morning cup of water as if he were a hardened tar with his tot. "Gosh, the sun's got bigger _again_! Are you taking the helm, Drinian?"

"Aye: would I trust one of these contemptible lubbers with my lady in dangerous seas?" Though he smiled, and they laughed, Drinian was anxious. "We've fifteen fathoms beneath us at the last sounding; the Dawn Treader draws two. Nay, Eustace, there's no immediate cause for alarm, though I should be happier had we charts of the odd rocks and sandbars in these seas."

"When we find 'em, we'll put them on the magician's map for you," Edmund promised. "Golly, it's so _hot_! Who's for a lounge on the fo'c'sle?"

The children reclined in the bows throughout the day, as the water grew steadily shallower and the faces of the crew became more tense. More than once they felt the ship lurch suddenly to one or other side, deftly manipulated by her captain's hand onto a safer easterly heading, but it was plain before Rhince summoned them, the galleon could go no further.

"Anchors fore and aft!" Drinian hollered, spinning the wheel between his hands, drawing the ship to rest with her side to the horizon. "Ugrian! Bring up the coracle! We can take you no further, Reep."

"Grateful am I, my Lord, for the skills that have carried me thus far." The sea floor looked terrifyingly close as Edmund leaned over the side. "Your Majesties all, I take my leave. Aslan send a helpful wind to carry you safe back, friends, to Narnia."

And it was then that Caspian's voice cut through the murmur of appreciative good wishes from the crew. "Lower the boat! Gather the men! I must speak to them!"


End file.
